


Little Faith

by lovelylaceandlilac



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Anal Sex, Angst, Case Fic, Drug Addiction, F/M, First Time, Friends to Lovers, Frottage, Humor, Hurt/Comfort, John in Denial About His Sexuality, M/M, Oral Sex, POV John Watson, POV Sherlock Holmes, PTSD John, Pining John Watson, Pining Sherlock, Post-The Hounds of Baskerville, Romance, Slow Build, Slow Burn, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-01-03
Updated: 2016-03-14
Packaged: 2018-01-07 05:59:02
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 19
Words: 59,647
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1116344
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lovelylaceandlilac/pseuds/lovelylaceandlilac
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John stood on the threshold of something palpable and raw. Sherlock laid there, fingers poised in thought as if he would rip the answers from the very threads of the universe. </p><p>He looked up, grey eyes scanning as John felt every stark detail stripped from him with each breath. The intimacy of the invasion burned and John felt the question hang between them. The secret cleaved from his flesh and silence.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Tapestry of Bone

**Author's Note:**

> What started as a short angst filled exploration of John's PTSD after Baskerville turned into a full blown case fic with oodles of sexual tension. Whoops!  
> Enjoy! 
> 
> And please comment, it's like electrolytes for the Muse!

** Chapter 1 **

 

They had come to kill him.

 

John was going to die.

 

“ _Shoot it!”_

He felt the bullet leave him. Springing from his hand in a flurry of pain and sound.

 

_“Look at it.”_

 

He was deep underwater. Light filtered through the reeds and fog. Mud filled his lungs.

 

_“Look Henry.”_

 

He could hear the fear, feel it rasping against his skull. Tapping in time with his heart.

 

“ _Look at it!”_

Sherlock was screaming. Had he shot him?

 

_“God this case! Thank you Henry, it’s been brilliant!”_

He twisted in the mud. Sherlock was laughing, laughing and screaming and he had just shot someone. Who did he shoot?

 

Inappropriate to laugh at a crime scene.

 

“ _Timing Sherlock, timing!”_

The enemy was running. There were trees in the Afghan desert. John was going to vomit, tasted death and bile.

 

Sherlock wouldn’t let him die.

 

The world exploded in a ball of heat. IED blast. They were hit.

 

Colors bled white and the ground lifted to meet John in a wave of moss and dirt. Sherlock’s face floated above him, framed by a halo of fire.

 

He was crying.

 

“ _John?”_

Christ, they were in Baskerville.

 

 

~~~~~

 

 

“Fear and stimulus.”

 

Sherlock closed his eyes and slumped against the wall of the room. They were in the Baskerville bedroom, the dark pine of the ceiling slanting down against the light, tilted towards John’s face in a river of black and shadow.

 

“God, that was brilliant!”

 

John swayed against the entrance. He looked like a car stripped at a junkyard, form and polish ripped away to reveal a rusted frame, brittle and bare, sanded down to the bone.

 

“You should have joined the army.” John licked his lips. “Your taste for adrenaline is endless.”

 

 “You would know.” Sherlock rasped.

 

John trailed his fingers along the entry dresser, feeling the prick of phantom splinters.

 

“Yes.” John cracked a smile. “I would, wouldn’t I?”

 

Sherlock staggered over to the sink and splashed water against his face.

 

“Are you hurt?” The detective’s eyes were hooded beneath the blue fluorescents, pupils impossibly tiny and dark.

 

John swallowed. “No.”

 

_Yes._

 

“You smell of powder burn….”

 

Sherlock’s hands were trembling as he gripped the sink. His fingers white, splintered against the porcelain basin like brittle cracks in the finish.

 

 “I’m not hurt.”

 

Sherlock cocked his head, considering. “Yes, the smell. In my head. Obviously.”

 

“How long until the gas wears off?”

 

“Difficult to say. We were down in the hollow for at least 15 minutes…”

 

Sherlock’s voice was rapid now, predicting a brittle night that John couldn’t swallow.

 

_Shouldn’t have to._

 

“…Our second dosing, double both our original exposure times, administered before our bodies have had a chance to expel the remnants of the last exposure...”

 

“Will one exacerbate the other?”

 

John could feel the sand between the pines in his mind already, smell the smolder of rubble and shit.

 

“Hard to say.”

 

“How long did you feel…” John’s voice drifted off. “…last night?”

 

Sherlock looked up, his pupils so large his eyes looked black.

 

“All night.”

 

John nodded.

 

_Of course._

 

“Did you sleep? You never came back in.”

 

Sherlock shook his head with distain.

 

“Of course not. I can never sleep when I need answers.”

 

“Well you got those in bloody spades tonight.” John sank into his bed. Carry on soldier. “And we have a long drive tomorrow.”

 

The implication hung there, wings spread like a bloody phantom. Smothering John in _this._

This choking sense of what should have been long gone.

 

Sherlock nodded and slowly stripped down to his briefs, not bothering with a shirt or trousers. John was too tired to feel awkward. Sherlock could be naked and on fire for all he cared.

 

_Run._

 

It thrummed against his spine the moment he closed his eyes. The sensation of being watched, that something was coming, sinking behind him. He felt breath against his ear. His throat seized up.

 

He had to stay awake.

 

“Do you think Henry will recover?” His voice was high and cheerful. The opposite of how he felt.

 

“Irrelevant.”

 

“Not to me.”

 

John could feel his heart hammering to escape. Fear. Fear and stimulus.

 

“So, will he?”

 

Sherlock grunted in annoyance.

 

“Don’t be a prat. This poor kid’s life was ruined.”

 

“Yes, and his brain was probably ruined too. Punched full of chemical holes like Swiss cheese.”

 

“Glad to know you care.”

 

“I _don’t._ ”

 

“At least he has closure now.”

 

“John, _shut up_ and go to sleep.”

 

“I am too hyped up on adrenaline to sleep.”

 

_Liar._

 

“Then go outside and chat up women at the pub. Don’t bother me.”

 

“I’m not getting dressed again.”

 

_Liar._

 

Sherlock turned over and faced John, his backlit skin starker than a corpse in the dark, his hands fisted in the sheets.

“The adrenaline will fade.” Sherlock’s voice was suddenly tired and thin. “The fight or flight reflex cannot be maintained indefinitely, even with chemicals.”

 

“Yes.” John choked out. “Potent stuff. Hell of a weapon.”

 

“Perfect for the battlefield, really.” Sherlock chuckled darkly. “I can see why Dr. Franklin couldn’t leave it well alone.”

 

“You’re brother would have a field day with the stuff.” John could help in the attempt at levity.

 

“God yes.” A smile twisted. “If only it would punch holes in his brain, utter bastard. I should send him some for Christmas.”

 

Their laughter rang out, shrill and reedy, before dispersing into the black.

 

The silence stretch thick like mud. John could feel the dark water creeping back around his senses, tugging his feet into the void.

 

“Sherlock…”

 

“Go to sleep.” The hollow in his eyes pierced John. “It’s just the gas.”

 

There was nothing left to say.

 

John closed his eyes and let the water take him.

 

 

 

~~~~~~ 

 

 

_Everything was green._

_The world existed in night vision, moving shadows and glowing eyes, like a cheap sex tape. John picked his way through the alley, over heaps of rubble and crumbled stone. Branches arched overhead, tangled in broken satellites and fraying clothesline._

_“We need a med evac.”_

_It was just up ahead. Flickering like a bad connection. Suicide bombing, rubble and bodies. Men down. John clutched the blood bag. They had to move fast._

_It was leaking._

_“They are dead by now.”_

_Sherlock’s face twisted behind John. Skin hung from his jaw like torn saran wrap, jagged and thin. Hound attack. John would have to patch that up later._

_“You won’t make it, John. You will fail them.”_

_His fingers were slippery from the blood bag. He shouldn’t have ditched his pack in the firefight._

_“Don’t say that. I know you care.” John tried to turn to scold Sherlock, but his collarbone was broken_

_Sherlock’s grin grew, splitting his lips into his cheeks, the tear growing and growing, ripping skin apart like wet paper._

_“Will caring about them help me work Johnny boy?”_

_IV’s draped the canopy, needles twinkling like Christmas lights. The blood bag was catching on the tree limbs, the tears getting larger and larger._

_“No?” Sherlock leaned in. “Then I chose not to care.”_

_The dirt was turning to sand, sinking and pooling around John’s knee as he pulled forward. John felt hands on his ankles, clawing his calves, pulling him under._

_“Oh doctor!” Sherlock was circling him now, singing softly. “Your patients care. They want you to save them.”_

_Hands were grasping out of the howling sand. Faces, cut and torn, shrapnel embedded in their teeth. John was being pulled under, gasping and choking._

_“Help.” If Sherlock would only pull him to safety._

_“You didn’t save them, doctor.”_

_Turning to Sherlock, vertebrae snapping like bubble wrap, John was retching, reaching, screaming._

_“Help me.”_

_Sherlock’s grin was getting larger, splitting across his skull in in trenches of black and red. Black and bone._

_“No John.” Sherlock grabbed his flailing wrist, pushing him further in their clawing arms._

_The wolves were circling now, red eyes rising from the mist of rag and dust._

_“No, John. You save **me.”**_

****

_The sand was up to John’s neck, the suction of blood and rubble. Sherlock’s sternum cracked open with a scream and light poured forth._

_Inside, beating, snarling and twisted where the heart should have been, was a mass of semtex._

_“John.” Sherlock’s voice was howling now. “Doctor, the pacemaker didn’t work. You can’t save my life.”_

_His fingers twisted in John’s hair, voice scraping his skull._

_“You can’t moderate my heart.”_

 

~~~~~

 

John woke up screaming.

 

His shoulder was caught in a vice, a tangle of limbs and shadows looming above him, fingers searching for a bullet. It was all dark and ridged, too close. Too fucking close. His body thrashed, arms snapping forward.

 

“Stop.” His wrist were pinned, eyes flashing above him.

 

His throat seized up. He was seven again, thrashing under thugs on the playground. Spread like an insect on the fence, waiting for the blow.

 

“It’s just me.”

 

His knees jerked up in a punishing blow, bone meeting thigh muscle. He had missed.

 

“Wake up!”

 

Elbow shot into a rib and he twisted to pin the darkness, tangling against sheet and flesh. It was too black. Too hot.

 

“Bloody hell!”

 

They were rolling over cotton dunes and then he was on top of a writhing mass of shadow, fingers seeking the pale flesh of an open throat. Something hissed and then he was flipped, pinned beneath bones and iron fingers. He was trapped. Helpless.

 

“John!”

 

They knew his name. Hissed threats to ‘ _stay still_ ’. Hot air crackled in his lungs. His wrists burned from the pressure. Still feeling then. Good. Not helpless. Not dead.

 

“Freeze! That’s an order captain!” 

 

_Captain._

 

The command cracked through his brain, turning white and hot and then everything was gone.

John went boneless. Sherlock loomed above him, chest heaving as he swore darkly.

 

_Sherlock._

 

John’s eyes glanced around the room. Shadowy figures still moved in the periphery, they were closing in. His body tensed to spring. He had to protect Sherlock.

 

“Don’t move!” Sherlock’s grip tightened. “Your bloody nightmare is bleeding through. The drug John. It’s the _drug!_ ”

 

No. Sherlock couldn’t see them, they were closing in. They had just been attacked and he had to _save them._

 

“The hound John. Baskerville. We are in an inn in England.” Sherlock was hurting him, nails digging into his wrists, pain lancing through the fog. “Focus John!”

 

_Baskerville._

 

“Sherlock…I see-”

 

“It’s the _drug_ John.” Sherlock leaned forward, head pressed against John’s neck, his lips brushing buzzed hair and goosebumps. “Fear and stimulant.”

 

John shuddered and closed his eyes with a gasp.

 

Sherlock had sunk into him. The weight was comforting, like the press of his Kevlar vest, a shield against the world. He should say something, move, but embarrassment made the words sticky and thick.

 

“Sherlock…”

 

John felt breath against his neck, the move of lips, but didn’t hear anything. Fear pooled beneath his belly in a warm throb.

 

“Did I hurt--”

 

“No.” The response was strained.

 

“That’s good.”

 

John struggled for sound. Every breath felt loud and slow.

 

“How long?”

 

“Thrashing for twenty minutes.” Sherlock stiffened. “Screaming for one.”

 

“Ah.” John shifted at the implication. “Did I wake you then?”

 

“No.”

 

John tensed against the buzzing warmth. Sherlock hadn’t slept. He always slept after cases.

 

“How long until dawn?”

 

“Four hours.”

 

“Long drive tomorrow.” He should say it. “We should go back to sleep.”

 

Sherlock shifted to the left, rolling his body off John, legs still intertwined he twisting against his side in an attempt to untangle the knot of sheets and flesh.

 

The air rushed in between them, empty and cold. John reached out, fingers brushing Sherlock’s elbow, the jagged rasp of a ‘ _thank you’_ lodged in his throat.

 

Sherlock stilled.

 

John lay silent. He could still feel the paralyzing fear. The warmth tightened beneath his skin, alert to every sensation, sparking electricity in his blood.

 

Sherlock shifted and then lay still.

 

Immobile next to John’s side.

 

In the same bed.

 

“Your next one…”

 

Sherlock’s voice was deliberate, slicing each syllable with pregnant silence.

 

“I will wake you before it accelerates...to that.”

 

John turned to face him on the bed. Sherlock was on his back, shaking fingers clenched beneath his chin. His eyes were fixed on the ceiling, pale chest rising in ragged breathes.

 

John’s hand was still cradled in the crook of Sherlock’s arm. Their legs still tangled together.

 

_Safe._

John had learned in the army, comfort could take many forms. Need did not always require a label.

 

Sherlock was shaking. Shaking like the boy he saw in front of the fire two nights ago, vicious and desperate.

 

John reached out, arm wrapping around rib and bone, and rested against him.

 

Two soldiers. No label.

 

Sherlock would wake him.

 

He closed his eyes and waited for sleep to take him.

 

~~~~~~~~

 

 

Real men did not need to talk.

 

John woke alone in the morning. He did not mention the indentation in his pillow, the space next to him where his bed was still warm. He showered and dressed with ruthless efficiency. Snapping towels, folding clothes, turning down the bed.

 

Everything was recognizable in daylight.

 

“You used up all the hot water!”

 

Recognizable and _cold_.

 

“Obviously.”

 

“How is that even possible? We are at an _inn_?”

 

“Simple matter. Taking the number of rooms in the inn and the average industrial boiler size-”

 

“Why?” John huffed out of the bathroom in a storm of goosebumps and haphazard linens. “What possible purpose could you have to deprive me of hot water?!”

 

“I’m hungry.” Sherlock looked annoyed. “You weren’t getting ready fast enough.”

 

“Then go eat by yourself!”

 

Something flickered across the detectives face. “Dull.”

 

Sherlock’s favorite excuse lacked conviction. John cocked his head. Sherlock’s eyes were sunken and bloodshot, his shoulders drawn forward at a harsh angle.

 

“Fine.” He chuckled, the implications warm in his belly.

 

They would get breakfast together then.

 

John liked the atmosphere of the inn. The paneled ceilings and plaid pillows that smelt of tobacco and commercial detergent. But after demon hounds and nightmares oak and brick just wasn’t chipper enough. He wanted to eat outside in the sunlight, wanted to hear the birds. Sherlock readily acquiesced, even though it would be cheery and quite possibly social.

 

The detective’s compliance should have been the first sign.

 

Sherlock sat on the table and picked through the menu aimlessly, scowling at the breakfast puns printed in bright font. John smiled at his black mood. Sherlock wouldn’t eat anything and would force John to drive back, all the while categorizing road kill and criticizing John’s conservative driving.

 

It would be normal. And John would love it for being normal.

 

So when Sherlock brought him his coffee alarm bells should have gone off. Sherlock getting coffee should have been the second sign.

 

“So they didn’t have it put down then,” Sherlock handed John his mug, sugar free this time. “The dog.”

 

“Obviously,” Breakfast smelled delicious. “They just couldn’t bring themselves to do it.”

 

“I see.” Sherlock gave a forced nod and furrowed his brow.

 

John held back laughter. “No you don’t.”

 

“No, I don’t.”  Sherlock agreed readily. “Sentiment?”

 

The way he said sentiment, spat it like a curse and an apology, should have been the third warning.

 

“Sentiment.” John ignored the itch that something was off. “Listen, what happened to me in the lab…”

 

Sherlock’s breath hitched and his eyes shuttered. Warning four.

 

“I hadn’t been to the hollow, so how come I heard those things in there…”

 

Sherlock was dodging the question. Leaky pipes, ketchup, train’s to London. The subterfuge was appallingly obvious for a man who could cry on command and brutalize witnesses.

 

“It was _you._ ” John’s stomach twisted. Suddenly the day was too bright. “ _You_ locked me in that bloody lab!”

 

“I had to.” Was that relief on his face? “It was an experiment.”

 

“An _experiment!_ ” He was shouting now, Sherlock shushing him like child. “I was _terrified_ Sherlock, I was _scared to death!_ ”

 

John felt a rush of shame and hate. He attempted to drug him, watched him like a lab rat and then had the audacity to hold him last night. How dare he witness that, how dare he pin him vulnerable, frightened and open because he _had tried to drug him_.

 

He had woken him several times in the night, warm and soothing. John had whispered about Afghanistan, whispered about his brothers, lost in sand and demons. And Sherlock had been there, silent, fingers smoothing over hair and skin.

 

“You got it wrong.” He was spiting now, each word a rupturing like a blister on his tongue.

 

“A bit.” Sherlock seemed perturbed, upset that this could matter.

 

“You got it wrong. It wasn’t in the sugar.” He got everything wrong. Every word, every touch. “You. Were. _Wrong._ ”

 

Last night. Wrong.

 

“It won’t happen again.”

 

And that was it. No apology. No admission of wrongdoing, of how fucking _sick_ this was. No admission that Sherlock had _shaken_ in his arms, that he had entered John’s nightmares, felt the _fear_ and _shared_ with him…

 

That if he didn’t understand before, didn’t know better, he should know now.

 

And the ride stretched long before him, the flat large and empty, the nights endless and dark.

 

“Any long term effects.”

 

And he would let it go.

 

“Not at all.”

 

He would burry it, because Sherlock simply _was_. And all he could do is shut down. Change the subject and move on.

 

Because real men didn’t need to talk.

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


	2. Adrenaline

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John stood there, on the threshold of something palpable and raw. Sherlock laid there, fingers poised in thought as if he would rip the answers from the very threads of the universe.
> 
> He looked up, grey eyes scanning as John felt every stark detail stripped from him with each breath. The intimacy of the invasion burned and John felt the question hang between them. The secret cleaved from his flesh and silence.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This fic initially started out as a stream of consciousness exercise before it turned into a case fic and got some plot - so if you read this chapter and think, "wow, I wish something would actually *happen*" please be patient! I promise it's coming.
> 
> From now on we will be switching from Sherlock and John's alternating POV's as well.
> 
> As always...please please please comment. I am in the process of editing the later chapters and your lovely reviews really inspire me!

** Chapter 2 **

 

So of course they didn’t talk about it.

 

And now they were in the car with plains of unbroken leather and drops of rain as big as grapes. Sherlock was in a sour mood, acting as if John had done something to wrong _him_.

 

It was probably the guilt.

 

Good.

 

Let him stew in it.

 

John sighed and tapped his fingers against the dash. He should be the one driving. Really. While he hadn’t exactly had the best night’s sleep, he had slept. Sherlock looked like a buzzard, his eyes red and crusted from nights of deprivation.

 

“Radio?”

 

Sherlock didn’t bother looking up from the road. The curl of his upper lip into a faint snarl was the only sign he heard and disapproved.

 

John suppressed a grin and turned the knob.

 

“I don’t like music while driving.” Sherlock bit out.

 

“There are a lot of things I don’t like that you ignore.”

 

John flipped through the stations absently. He wasn’t terribly picky.

 

“Do you like the Kinks?”

 

“Make a deduction.”

 

John ignored him, trying to feel guilty at Sherlock’s discomfort. It wasn’t working.

 

“Only classical music then?”

 

It was merely an inquiry. John was leaving it on the Kinks.

 

“I prefer the complexity of the music to reflect the complexity of my thoughts.”

 

“Of course.” John spared a glance. “That explains why you have every David Bowie album.”

 

“Genius takes many forms.”

 

“You would know.”

 

“He has written over 550 pieces.”

 

“All of them quality, I’m sure.” John raised an eyebrow and cleared his throat.

 

“I will not argue Laughing Gnome is the pinnacle of his work.” Sherlock sighed as if Bowie’s genius was a painfully obvious. “Many artists struggle for years to produce one great album, one definitive song. They chase the music, hunt it like dogs trying everything. He is the opposite…”

 

Sherlock had turned, was looking at John now.

 

“He struggles not to write.”

 

Silence. John sensed he had missed something. He was suddenly tired, tired of Sherlock’s pouting and of wallowing in his flat mates misery like a preschooler. God knew Sherlock could pout for the next decade.

 

“How far until London then?”

 

Sherlock merely grunted.

 

“Want to play a game?”

 

No response.

 

He shifted and turned the radio off.

 

“In the army, long rides and such. Used to play a game, twenty questions.” John tapped his fingers on the dash, suddenly excited at the prospect. “I think of something and you have to guess what it is. You get twenty questions, yes or no answers, if you don’t guess it by twenty I win.”

 

Sherlock leveled his gaze at John and cracked a wry smile. “You want to play a deductive reasoning game? With _me_?”

 

John scratched the back of his scalp. He hadn’t thought of that.

 

“Hmmm, no. Twenty is too much. How about ten then.”

 

“Five.”

 

“Five?”

 

“Five.”

 

“Sherlock, the object can be anything.” John gave an incredulous snort. “You’ll need more than five.”

 

“No. It can’t be anything.” Sherlock murmured. “It’s something you would think of. And I know you.”

 

John shifted. The air was suddenly thicker.

 

“Five is all I need.”

 

John sighed. “Fine.”

 

Sherlock straighten his spin and jut his chin forward in true aristocratic form. “I’m ready.”

 

“Well, I’m not.” John couldn’t help but smile at Sherlock’s pompous declaration. “I still have to think of something.”

 

“Make it good.”

 

“I’m trying.”

 

“No, not that.”

 

“Sherlock!”

 

“That’s obvious too.”

 

“Okay, now you are just guessing.”

 

“Road kill is pedestrian.” Sherlock waved dismissively. “It can’t be anything you are looking at.”

 

John felt his cheeks burn as he turned away from the window and the aforementioned dead squirrel. This was going to be harder than he thought.

 

“No reducing the number of guesses any further either.”

 

“Sherlock!” John resisted the urged to strangle the detective. “If you can just read my bloody mind what is the point of the game?”

 

Sherlock wrinkled his nose.

 

“I don’t like listening to the Kinks.”

 

Oh.

 

Honestly.

 

John cleared his throat absently. “Alright. I’ve thought of something.”

 

“Is it living or inanimate?”

 

“Inanimate.”

 

“The radio was a poor choice John.”

 

John threw his hands up in exasperation. There was no winning!

 

“Fine!”

 

“We were just talking about it.”

 

Sherlock gave a condescending look that would make Mycroft proud.

 

“I know.” John crossed his arms and gave an irritated cough. “Shut-up. _You_ think of something.”

 

“Me?”

 

“Yes, you. And I get 20 questions.”

 

Sherlock smiled and tilted his head, considering.

 

“Okay. Ready”

 

“Living or inanimate.”

 

Sherlock grinned. “Living.”

 

“Animal or human?”

 

“Human’s _are_ animals, John. Class mammalia, order primates. We just happen to be especially clever Hominidae.”

 

John gave his most unamused expression and cleared his throat expectantly.

 

 “ _Fine._ Animal.” Sherlock gave an agitated huff. “These rules are stupid.”

 

John suppressed a grin and tapped his fingers against the cool glass, choosing his next question carefully.

 

“Is it fairly big?”

 

“Relative to what?”

 

John grunted. Of course Sherlock would be a literalist.

 

“Is it bigger than this car?”

 

“No.”

 

“Is it smaller than this car?”

 

“John what animal is the exact dimension of this car?” Sherlock gave a pained sigh, as if the entire exercise was beneath him. “You just wasted a question.”

 

“Is that a yes?”

 

“Obviously.”

 

John tapped his nose, considering. “Have I seen one before, in person?”

 

“I would imagine so.”

 

“No unicorns then?” John cracked a grin.

 

“That depends,” Sherlock smiled. “I hear Afghanistan is quite unpredictable.”

 

“If only in _that_ manner.” Damn it, John was having fun.

 

“You’re stalling.”

 

Right. Smaller than the car and John had seen one in person.

 

“Does it live in water or land?”

 

“One at a time.”

 

Honestly, he had just taught Sherlock the game and he was getting the lecture on rules. He was better off being passive aggressive.

 

“Does it live in water?”

 

“No.”

 

“Does it have fur?”

 

“Yes.”

 

“Did your house have one growing up?”

 

“Yes.”

 

John bit back a grin. It couldn’t be _that_ easy.

 

“Is it a cat?”

 

“Dull.”

 

“A dog?”

 

“A dog? _Really?_ After _this_ case? Please John, I know it is a struggle but do try to think.”

 

John sank further back into his seat, trying not to pout like a child.

 

“Is it smaller than a tire?”

 

“Hmmm.”

 

“I’ll take that as a yes then.” It was too much to think Sherlock’s attention would last through an entire game. “A rabbit?”

 

“No. Size was your strong suite.”

 

“Smaller than a book?”

 

“Yes.” Sherlock drummed his fingers against the steering wheel and whined. “John, you’re being boring.”

 

Sherlock was a scientist. Of course!

 

“A mouse? Lab rat?!”

 

“No, John and that was two.” Sherlock declared primly. “Last guess.”

 

John scowled. He didn’t want the game to end. Sherlock had a way of being fun, despite his best efforts. Only the detective could make sarcastic condescension both entertaining and ingratiating.

 

“I have five more.” John huffed.  “You’re changing the rules because you don’t want to lose.”

 

“Wrong.” Sherlock drawled. “I’m changing the rules because this is frightfully dull. Last one.”

 

John sucked his breath in. One guess. He was sure he got it with the lab rat. Pet’s? Ferret, chinchilla, gerbil? Too many options. What would Sherlock have as a pet? Too many options again. The nutter kept heads in the fridge.

 

“A hedgehog.”

 

“That,” Sherlock broke out in a grin. Of course, the pompous prat loved gloating. “was the worst guess ever. You have been watching too many youtube videos.”

 

John leaned back against the seat and groaned. Why had he thought 20 questions with Sherlock would turn out normal?

 

“Fine. What was it?”

 

Sherlock pursed his lips in displeasure. “Is telling me in the rules?”

 

“Yes.” John would be damned if he didn’t know what weird arse pet Sherlock had as a kid.

 

“A bee.”

 

“A bee?” John’s voice caught like a prepubescent boy. “A be-people don’t have bee’s as pets!”

 

“Don’t they? The gardeners kept them for the orchards at the summer estate.”

 

“Sherlock.” John didn’t know where to start. Definitely skipping the multiple estates bit. “That doesn’t count. A pet is a dog, a companion, someone to play fetch with. A friend.”

 

Sherlock grinned. “Does that make you my pet?”

 

John glared.

 

“You know what I mean. Trust you to have a pet that can’t be touched, stings, and causes anaphylactic shock.”

 

“You can put them on leashes. That should count.”

 

“You _leashed bees._ ”

 

“With dental floss.” Sherlock grinned. “Put them in the freezer briefly and they go into hibernation. Long enough to leash them.”

 

“What, so you could drag them around to sting Mycroft?”

 

“Sometimes.” Sherlock suddenly looked wistful. “Not the honey bees. They are different.”

 

Sherlock’s eyes clouded. Suddenly he looked much younger, face smooth and unweather.

 

“I liked the sound of them.”

 

John looked up, startled. Sherlock was staring at the road, voice soft.

 

“The buzz was….soothing.”

 

Sherlock never talked about his childhood. Ever.

 

John looked out at the countryside, rolling hills blurred out by streaks of grey rainwater. The memory of Baskerville came back unbidden and bitter. The weather seemed somehow appropriate.

 

“Childhood memories. Personal stuff between _friends_.”

 

The words were sour. He had almost lost this anger.

 

“Did you watch me?”

 

Dreary. Wet. Cold.

 

“Did you watch me in the lab?”

 

“No”

 

John’s felt like he had swallowed rancid milk.

 

“No John, I didn’t.”

 

Sherlock was _lying._

 

~~~~~~~

 

 

“Do we have any milk?”

 

The rest of the car ride back had been tense, filled with tangible silence. Sherlock hadn’t spoken since, and John had gladly followed suite.

 

“Look yourself Sherlock, I am rather busy.”

 

“I am busy too. And I assure you, what I am doing is more important.”

 

John rolled his eyes and made for the door. Sherlock would have to hone his foraging skills without him.

 

“Alright. I’m off.”

 

“Where are you going?”

 

“Sarah’s.”

 

Sherlock’s head popped up from the couch like a groundhog. “I thought you two broke up.”

 

Normally John would be amused that Sherlock remembered anything about any of the women he had been with. Considering he was in New Zealand for over a three days before Sherlock texted ‘ _Starving. When’s dinner ready? - SH’_ , only to then send 30 more the moment he realized John was out of country and dinner was not forthcoming.

 

The roaming fees had been horrible.

 

“We got back together two weeks ago. Going to give it another go.”

 

Sherlock’s eyes slowly traveled down his arm to the duffle bag. “Staying the night.”

 

“Yes.”

 

John continued towards the door. Sarah’s apartment would be warm and cheery, lavender potpourri in the kitchen instead of random body parts. Soft rugs and no skull on the mantel.

 

John paused in the doorway.

 

He shouldn’t worry, but still…

 

“Are you going to be alright Sherlock?” He turned, considering. “Here. Alone. After last ni-”

 

“Of course.” Sherlock huffed. “You should be the one worried. Rekindling a romantic entanglement only to go and have nightmares on her lilo.”

 

“That” John grit his teeth. “Is none of your concern.”

 

“It is if you get dumped again and spend the week plastered with Mike. Your _sentiment_ can be a terrible distraction.”

 

“My _sentiment_? My-Christ why do I even bother with concern when you are such a fucking _machine_.”

 

“I should take that as a compliment.”

 

“No,” John threw up his arms. “No you shouldn’t.”

 

“I fail to see why you are upset.” Sherlock snapped. “I am being helpful.”

 

“Helpful like the way you _drugged_ and _experimented_ on me.”

 

“It was for a case! It wasn’t even in the sugar!” Sherlock was yelling now.

 

“You still _tried!_ You still _traumatized_ me!” He was advancing now, fists clenched, the lie thick in his throat.

 

“And do you intend to expose her to that trauma tonight?” Sherlock hissed. “Share fear and sentiment like _lovers.”_

“Don’t twist your insults about my love life into false concern that I will have nightmares tonight.”

 

“Will you?” Sherlock’s voice was low, barely above a whisper.

 

 John stood there, trembling with something tight and foreign. Was this his attempt at caring, at preventing John from embarrassing himself?

 

Only Sherlock could make concern so _cold_.

 

“Piss. Off.”

 

He slammed the door and left.

 

 ~~~~

 

_Everything was blue._

_John’s breath came out in whiffs of smoke and ash. The cold snarled beneath his fingers, licking exposed hair on his neck in wet trails of sweat._

_He was in a meat locker, Mathews bleeding out beneath his fingers. He had to hurry. Stitch faster._

_“Think he is ready for the grinder, Johnny-boy?”_

_Sherlock was sprawled on a nearby gurney, grinning like the devil._

_“Don’t die on me.”_

_Black was seeping through his pores, oozing out of his nose and tear ducts. Needles stuck out John’s arms and torso like acupuncture, pumping his blood into Mathews broken body._

_“We could make him into sausage.”_

_Sherlock was laughing. The grin ripped his face apart like soggy butcher’s paper, red against white._

_“It’s the closest thing to pork they’ll ever eat.”_

_Sherlock’s cackle was ricocheting off the walls, rattling scalpel and drill. John moved the overhead magnifier and cut deeper. He was lightheaded._

_“Johnny-boy, your hands are shaking.”_

_He was elbow deep in intestines, pulling and pulling. Miles of the stuff. He was loosing too much blood._

_“You look like death, Sherlock.”_

_He, did, all pale and eyes, arms trailing down the gurney like Gollum._

_“Are you okay?”_

_Sherlock sat up grinning, his chest cracking open in a screaming mass of wire and black. Not good._

_“Need some blood?”_

_John ripped several needles out of Mathews and held them towards Sherlock like a wilted bouquet. Mathews had plenty._

_“Hmmmm,” Sherlock licked his lips. “Fancy a transplant?”_

_Sherlock was wheeling closer now, the gurney sliding through blood and shit._

_“Transfusion.” John chided._

_“No.”_

_His shark black eyes were hard and hungry._

_“Please…”_

_Arms outstretched, reaching for him._

_“No, I don’t **need** a transfusion.” Sherlock was snarling behind his ear, teeth sinking in tender skin. “Your blood is **tainted**.”_

 

 ~~~~

 

The second time John woke he lay still.

 

He didn’t know why he froze, but he knew it was very, _very_ important.

 

“John!”

 

He heard a woman’s voice and thought of his mother, face round and sad. She only screamed his father’s name, though. Screamed and howled.

 

“John, wake up!”

 

Harry, maybe? No. Harry was so much rougher; her voice was filled with gravel and challenge. Even before the alcohol, she breathed defiance. Not concern.

 

“John, it’s me! Sarah!”

 

Sarah? Was he sleeping with his therapist? Sleeping with the devil. Why did that feel familiar?

 

“John…”

 

She was crying. _Sarah_.

 

John opened his eyes and his head swam with shadow and light. There was movement and pressure and every fiber screamed to run and _strangle_ …

 

“Water.”

 

Sarah nodded, flanked by figures John knew weren’t real. But they were. Sarah just had to get away, stay away from _him_ and he didn’t know and everything pressed and _burned_.

 

He fought his eyes closed against the feeling of death, that in that moment they would pounce and crush the breath from his lips.

 

But they didn’t.

 

Sarah returned with the water. John felt like years had passed. He was grated and raw.

 

“Post Traumatic Stress?”

 

He just nodded. The Prazosinhadn’t worked. Figures.

 

“You haven’t had an….episode…before.”

 

“Baskerville.” His throat was hoarse from screaming. “Army base. Saw a man get blown up.” Let her read into that what she would.

 

“John.” Sarah reached for him and he flinched.

 

“Fine. Sorry.”

 

Sarah sat back on her heels and nodded. Understanding lit her face. She knew this was personal, too much for _this_. They were still too new.

 

Good.

 

“I should go.” John scrambled to get dressed. This had been such a fucking mistake. He had never felt so naked. He hadn’t even made it into her bed last night. He was on the sodding lilo. He needed to _leave._

 

“Let me write you a prescription for something stronger. I know you won’t ask for it.” She tucked her hair behind her ear and went to her desk. “I’ll let you bring up this subject next time, if ever. Just know…I’m here”

 

Relief washed over him like warm water. Of course. She was always so understanding. All soft and lavender.

 

He accepted the paper, crinkled and blue, and pressed her into a hungry kiss that soon turned gentle.

 

She was perfect.

 

“I’ll buy you lunch tomorrow and we’ll talk.”

 

He meant it.

 

~~~~~~

 

 

Adrenaline was a funny thing.

 

John meandered around the pharmacy isle, clutching the crinkled blue paper like a ticket stub. He could eat a candy bar, but he would have to go up and pay for it first, proper citizen and all that. The counter was so far away.

 

Just crap magazines then.

 

John wasn’t sure how he got to the pharmacy. He had wandered aimlessly after leaving Sarah’s for what felt like hours. The pharmacy had been so brightly lit, like a garish roadside attraction, he just ended up inside.

 

ID, pay, go.

 

He was outside again, no idea where or what he wanted. No, he knew what he wanted. Sleep. Uninterrupted, happy, _peaceful_ sleep.

 

Maybe he should get coffee.

 

So he wandered, step-by-step, street-by-street. Pavement stretched into black and greys, a maze of intersecting lines and huddled shadows. He had run every inch of London with Sherlock, marked every jinny with his tread and sweat, his bruise on the city. London with Sherlock was a living lover, responsive to the curve of his boot, the press of his breath. Intimate.

 

Amazing how claustrophobic these streets looked now. He didn’t know this woman.

 

John was back at baker street, taking stairs two at the time.

 

Key, door, open.

 

Dust and glow, telly and rug. Sherlock lay draped across the arm of the couch, skin puckered blue from the cast of the telly. John didn’t say anything.

 

What was there to say?

 

Water, stairs, pill.

 

Sheets gripped him with knotted fingers. Streetlight cast patterns on Mrs. Hudson’s wallpaper, growing fleur de lis into leaping stags and dancing sunflowers.

 

Adrenaline was a funny thing.

 

He would swallow it down.

 

~~~~~~


	3. Threads of the Universe

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John stood there, on the threshold of something palpable and raw. Sherlock laid there, fingers poised in thought as if he would rip the answers from the very threads of the universe.
> 
> He looked up, grey eyes scanning as John felt every stark detail stripped from him with each breath. The intimacy of the invasion burned and John felt the question hang between them. The secret cleaved from his flesh and silence.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I posted an extra chapter this week as I felt the two link together. But from now on I will only be posting one a week.
> 
> Thank you for all the people who bookmarked and are commenting on this work! It really means the world to me! This is actually my first fic, and I have babied and worried over whether or not to put it online for 8 months now (we always think our own work is crap, don't we?). Your comments are really inspiring me as I try to write the last few chapter and finish my final edits.

** Chapter 3 **

 

 

Mornings were hateful.

 

Odious, repellant, invidious, pestiferous, execrable, _vile._

 

Sherlock languished on his side, waiting for the inevitable. The case was over and he was wretched.

 

Morose, saturnine, lugubrious, disconsolate, _forsaken._

He twisted thin furls of wallpaper with his fingernails, skinning the walls. The pattern curled like old parchment, flaked with dried paste and plaster, fiber and spackle. It was depression era old, not synthetic adhesives but animal glue, crumbled and white like ash.

 

Horses bound the garish walls, lame and boiled, and he could positively _lick_ it.

 

Toxic. That would teach John to sleep through his morning tea.

 

Fishing a pen out of the seat cushions Sherlock began drawing horses on the wallpaper, rifles peeping out of fleur de lis.

 

He was thirsty but the kitchen was too far and bright. Too many cups and kettles and _tedium_.

 

Sherlock sketched a caldron beneath the foal.

 

John should be up, would be up if not for plane-Jane-Sawyer and 24 hour pharmacy. Unfair that he should sleep, content and _satisfied_ , while Sherlock languished without proper hydration.

 

The ink dried up against the plaster trench. Sherlock peeled the remaining strip in a broad circle. The horses needed a morbid moat.

 

“John.” He whined.

 

The glue factory would be Baskerville. Sherlock drew a fanged bunny attacking a hound for good measure. Stick figure Stapleton (too dull to warrant effort) had been splicing with gila lizards.

 

His throat was intolerably dry. His phone was across the room where he had flung it in a fit of (justified) petulance.

 

“Johhhhn.” No response. The doctor was clearly the worst flat mate ever.

 

He would have to purchase additional phones to store in the couch for such emergencies.

 

New plan then. (Justified) Exasperation at what was clearly the most boring morning since the invention of _crime_ wouldn’t jeopardize his mission to share the misery.

 

Sherlock squirmed along the couch, arms sweeping the ground until locating a suitable projectile (stress ball?) and chucking it at the ceiling with a resounding thwack.

 

“Johhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhn!”

 

Still nothing.

 

If John wasn’t down by noon he was starting his own criminal empire.

 

~~~~~

 

John was down at 10:17.

 

Sherlock had finally fetched a glass of water (tactical retreat) and in the process managed to dirty every single dish with post experiment biohazards (suitable reprisal). The results were stacked in precarious towers across every surface of the kitchen.

 

“Morni- for the love of – SHERLOCK!”

 

Sherlock continued pulling threads out of the couch stitching. Revenge had only taken seven minutes. He had a stack of 1327 threads. He hoped the couch would split open and _burst_.

 

 John was yelling as he went about tidying the kitchen.

 

Not really.

 

John liked putting things in order. Like putting things back in their loathsome dull place.

 

John was humming, oblivious to Sherlock’s ennui.

 

Ennui, from old French ennui annoyance from enuier to vex from Latin inodiare to make loathsome.

 

Loathsome.

 

Sherlock wrestled a side stitch off the couch and huffed. He wanted tea.

 

“Cuppa?”

 

Sherlock buried his face in the couch corner.

 

“Hngh.”

 

John put the kettle on, the harsh bent of his shoulders softening with every movement.

 

How nice, how _pleasant_ it must be to be comforted by the routine.

 

John brought the cup over, warm and open. Sherlock thrust a hand out, not looking up from the couch corner.

 

His hands burned.

 

It had only been two days. He should have a week before the boredom set in. The room was oppressive, his mind was raw, the colors were already fading.

 

It’s not the morning. It’s the _beginning_.

 

He should have _days._

John sat in his chair, popping the paper and munching toast. Regrouping. _Recovering._

He didn’t want his tea anymore.

 

~~~~~~

 

John left at 11:00 for lunch with Sarah-sod-off and a round at the clinic.

 

Sherlock relocated his sprawl to the floor, stripping strings from the rug. His phone was too far off and his tea was cold. The strings formed a little nest around his curled knee. He found a sugar cube under the chair (reaching distance).

 

The sugar cube had family.

 

Sherlock arranged the cubes in the nest, flecked with dirt like robin’s eggs.

 

Sugar couldn’t hatch.

 

He picked apart the nest with numb fingers, stringing red lines between the chair and table. He would create a cat’s cradle, a web, a net to _snare_ his mind.

 

 He would catch it before it slipped out of him.

 

~~~~~~

 

John came back at 6:30, disgustingly optimistic.

 

“New security system?” His face split in a wry grin at the webs of red string threaded throughout the living room.

 

Sherlock ignored him. He hadn’t moved from the rug.

 

John attempted to navigate the string maze turned fractal pattern. The room was dark (the light switch had been too far away to be bothered with), making the task considerably more difficult. His shoes stopped in front of Sherlock. Remnants of black dirt. Lunch by the park before the clinic.

 

Sighing, he nudged the detective’s shoulder with his foot. His dirty foot. Gross.

 

“You need a case.”

 

John was being obvious. Sherlock snorted and buried his face further in the rug. Boring.

 

“Are you hungry?”

 

Concern. Perhaps warranted. Sherlock hadn’t slept in days, hadn’t eaten either. The burn helped against the numbness, the edge helped against the…irrational aftereffects. Baskerville. Not that he would tell John that.

 

Sherlock tucked his knees in, shaking his head in rebuttal.

 

“Did you lie there all day? Like a lazy cat?”

 

Sarcastic retorts involved too much effort.

 

Silence.

 

John sighed, long suffering, as if _he_ had to endure this malaise. As if he was the one who _ached_ with this.

 

The footsteps retreated, haphazard over red tripwires. John was going back out, errands probably.

 

Silence.

 

He was swallowed by it, the tedium of _all_ of it, and nothing seemed like it would ever spark inside him again, that the cotton would move in, grey and simple, numbing his senses, forcing his mind to circle tighter and tighter in on itself…

 

Suddenly he didn’t want John’s absence

 

“I think I am going to get a dog.” Outrageous lie. Irresistible bait.

 

John snapped back in the sitting room immediately, shopping list forgotten.

 

“You _._ A _dog_?” Suddenly John was large and _bright_ and more.

 

“Yes.” Sherlock rolled on his back with a dramatic huff. “Dogs are much easier to tolerate than people.”

 

“A dog-no no _no!_ Sherlock how would we even- no! We are not even considering this!” John was sucking color and sound in a vortex of outrage. “What even brought this on?!”

 

“If a cadaver dog can be trained by simpletons to track body trails weeks old, imagine what a superior mind could do.”

 

“I shudder to think!”

 

John was trying to contain himself. He reeked of feeling, of vitality and panic. The noise of his thinking _, imagining_ , drowned out the roaring hum. Sherlock rolled towards it, the air thrummed with it. Intensity. Yes.

 

“What John, you don’t want a companion?”

 

Sherlock was purring now, peeling and pricking at John’s outrage.

 

“I already have Sara—are you implying I’m a _pet_?! Again!”

 

John’s face was splotched with red. Blood and _passion._ Sherlock inhaled. More.

 

“God no. You are responsible for your own grooming and feeding.”

 

“And the dog, who would be responsible for that?”

 

“You naturally.”

 

“No Sherlock. I’m allergic.”

 

Yes. Allergic. Even better. Sherlock looked up, smiling and reeling at the contrast in sensation. Conductor of light was a disservice to this. _This_!

 

“Bother. I wonder how acute snake’s sense of smell is…”

 

Bait and more and Sherlock arched up in a stretch and the roar was so very faint and he could almost…

 

 

“A dog sounds lovely.” John sighed, giving up. Sherlock had pushed too far. John was too accommodating and now he was over it and had agreed and was most likely going to find something else to occupy himself and the air was sterile once _again_.

 

Fine! Sherlock wanted him _gone!_

 

Sherlock growled, turning over in a flash of silk and viciousness. Dressing gown, the strings, yes. And he was ripping them out in tight cords of red. He would rip it all apart.

 

“Sherlock, when is the last time you ate?”

 

He refused to look up from the strings. Ridiculous. John mistook vocal indignation for stomach pains. As if Sherlock lacked such control.

 

“Have you eaten since Baskerville?”

 

Concern? Sherlock bit back a grin.

 

“Irrelevant.”

 

“Is that a no?” John was approaching him, the confrontation back in his voice.

 

Sherlock flipped on his back, the portrait of indifference. “I don’t need it.”

 

John switched on the desk lamp and exhaled sharply.

 

“Christ, Sherlock. You look like hell.” John was leaning over him now, smelling of coffee and disinfectant. “Your _eyes_ …when was the last time you slept?”

 

Sherlock rolled his eyes and resumed picking at the dressing gown. Red lines, yes. Plucked out like veins.

 

“Sherlock, are you not sleeping? At night…are you…?”

 

John trailed off uncertainly, waving his hand as if it could illustrate this concept that Sherlock might not want to hear. His stomach rolled.

 

“It’s awful, I know. We both now… you comforted me before…maybe…”

 

No. His heart picked up and his stomach knotted. Sentiment and worry and _pity_ that he might be _afraid_ and it was wrong! Wrong! How dare he look at him like that, like he might _need_ something, like he might be _fragile_ and his voice was soft and _intolerable_!

“Why the sudden concern doctor?” John was reaching for him with a look of something unfamiliar and surely dangerous. “Have you forgiven me already? So easy then, I expected you would get over it.”

 

The look snapped off, John’s face darkening in anger. Yes. Sherlock had experimented on him, because he was the one in _control._ He was in control, not to be _pitied_ like something weak and helpless.

 

Sherlock bared his teeth and grinned. Pushing _this_ away. Yes.

 

“Prat.”

 

John stormed off to the kitchen, the tangled strings wrenching taunt against his legs.

 

Sherlock licked his lips. It looked like John had rent the air apart, bleeding the space-time continuum in thin red scratches.

 

~~~~ 

 

John had ordered take out (Sherlock refused to eat any) and updated his blog (like anyone worthwhile was reading it).

 

By the time John had switched of the insufferable telly and gone upstairs the room was a roar. Too many lines and objects and fucking _clutter_. And he was binning things and hiding books in cabinets and there was still too much!

 

Sherlock retreated into his room, ripping the periodic table down, removing the desk chair and it was still too much. He glared and it scratched and why had Mrs. Hudson chosen striped wallpaper when the house was clearly settling and now it was uneven. Uneven lines slanting and leaning and intolerable.

 

He would play the violin. The music would straighten it out.

 

It was then, on the first note, he heard the mouse. Hateful thing, screeching and gnawing with its repulsive little teeth underneath the floorboards. And he couldn’t play now, not with it competing with the music, scurrying and scratching at his brain and Sherlock _had_ to straighten the wallpaper with the violin so the mouse had to _go_.

 

He got his burglary kit, prying up floor boards, remembering vaguely that it was too sudden for this, that this state of desperation should be day five of the roar.

 

The mouse darted away, slipping past the baseboard and up inside the wall, leaving a trail of droppings and trash.

 

 

Sherlock’s stomach curled. Disgusting. There was trash and fecal matter all around him, and he was sweeping it up with gloves and spraying and it was probably _in the walls as well!_

 

It was hazy and grey when he ripped the wallpaper down. He attacked the wall, slicing into it like open heart surgery. His breathing matched the crack of the crow bar and the wall was bleeding plaster and insulation. Wad after wad of white and pink came spilling out, the wall’s fluffy guts littering the floor.

 

His room was covered in dust and clouds, and morning was now suddenly screaming in John’s voice, shrill and bright and Mrs Hudson was there too, screaming about blood pressure and rent. They were standing in the doorway, shimmering like a mirage. When had they come in?

 

“Redecorating.” He waved and grinned because it was a lie and John looked so very confused and red.

 

And now it was over and he had pressed Mycroft’s card into Mrs. Hudson’s hands (stolen) and was leaving the corpse of the room.

 

Didn’t matter.

 

It was hollow and quite now, infinitely worse than the roar.

 

 ~~~~~~

 

Sherlock returned two days later with a split lip and two broken fingers.

 

He sniffed the air of the apartment. The disgusting smell had followed him from the docks. It must have been him after all. He needed a shower and some tea.

 

John was ashen. “Sherlock.” He pleaded as he taped the fingers. “You look like death. What happened?”

 

“Bored.” It should be obvious.

 

John sucked in. He was turning red now. His anger wasn’t fun anymore. Nothing was, really.

 

“What were you doing?”

 

“Infiltrating the Russian mob to find something interesting.” He shrugged his shoulders. “They were unimaginative at best. Waste of time.”

 

John shook his head, “We need to get these X-rayed.”

 

“No.” Sherlock slumped on the couch.

 

“Sherlock, they are broken.” John was fetching his coat.

 

“I don’t care.” He really didn’t.

 

“They need to be reset. Otherwise they won’t heal properly.”

 

“What difference does it make?” John was annoying, buzzing like an insect, part of the drone and throb.

 

“They could heal crooked and not bend right!”

 

Sherlock looked at his hand. He should care. He tried. It didn’t work. It all seemed so distant.

 

Irrelevant.

 

Pointless.

 

“Sherlock!”

 

He looked up. John looked underwater, blurry and dark. He should hate that.

 

“Reset them here then.”

 

“Sherlock, no. I don’t have any anesthetic and just look at that. They are probably broken in multiple places. You need an X-ray!”

 

“Anesthetic.” He waved dismissively. It wasn’t possible to feel _less._ “I don’t need it. Reset it. I won’t feel it.”

 

“Sherlock…”

 

“Really, John.” He stretched out, cold and brittle. “I would welcome the pain.”

 

John recoiled and Sherlock realized he was smiling. His lips peeled further back and he tasted blood.

 

“Don’t smile like that.” John’s voice cracked with something dark and unfamiliar.

 

“I need a shower.” He did. He just wasn’t sure he could muster the energy to take one.

 

“Sherlock…your eyes” John reached towards his face, fingers brushing his cheek, and someone was hissing at the contact. Sherlock honestly didn’t know if it was John or him.

 

“You have a fever.”

 

“Hmmmm.”

 

“When was the last time you slept?”

 

He merely shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t know.”

 

“Was it before Baskerville?” John’s voice was cracking; shrill with something frantic and hurt.

 

“Possibly.” He didn’t have the energy to lie. What was the point?

 

“Sherlock, are you purposeful avoiding sleeping…because of…?”

 

And that was _the_ question wasn’t it. Was this avoidance intentional then? No, no need to examine that. Baskerville. That night felt tight and tender.

 

He merely looked at John, blank and thin. This was tedious.

 

“Sherlock, Mary gave me a prescription for Secobarbital. I’ve been taking them for…”

 

Sherlock leaned forward, interest snapping through his body like electricity. A schedule II barbiturate? Sarah must have been really shaken up. Was John about to-?

 

“If I give you one will you eat something and go to bed?”

 

John was talking faster now, misreading Sherlock’s sharp interest for hope.

 

“We can go to the hospital tomorrow, just, just rest okay? You won’t dream. I promise.”

 

Sherlock bit back another smile. Don’t act suspicious. Why wouldn’t Sarah prescribe Cyproheptadine or Prazosin? Secobarbital was deliciously, wonderfully strong and highly controlled.

 

“It’s been…hard.” Sherlock ignored the vicious twist inside him. The lie came out too easily and resonated-no he just wanted the drug. He had never tried Secobarbital before. He could sleep if he _wanted_ to, if sleep weren’t so boring. John was wrong of course, something as irrational as fear could never affect Sherlock like that.

 

“Maybe…” He trailed off before reluctantly nodding. John would be suspicious if he appeared too eager.

 

John looked so happy, his trusting face crinkling in relief and warmth and Sherlock suddenly felt sick. He was probably just hungry. It had been over a week.

 

 

“I should eat something.” He had to state it. John couldn’t be encouraged to coddle him.

 

“We’ve got leftover takeout.”

 

John reached for Sherlock’s good hand. And it didn’t make sense. John was trusting and vulnerable and yet he exuded something heady. As if he were going to teach Sherlock to weather through, as if there was something to weather through, as if they _shared something_ , as if he wasn’t the one being deceived.

 

“I understand.” John was squeezing Sherlock’s hand and why did he suddenly feel _this_?

 

He pushed it down, down with Baskerville and the beast it represented. He was in control.

 

Sherlock looked up and forced a smile, squeezing John’s hand in return.

 


	4. The Absence of Color

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John stood there, on the threshold of something palpable and raw. Sherlock laid there, fingers poised in thought as if he would rip the answers from the very threads of the universe.
> 
> He looked up, grey eyes scanning as John felt every stark detail stripped from him with each breath. The intimacy of the invasion burned and John felt the question hang between them. The secret cleaved from his flesh and silence.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi everyone! From now on I plan on posting a chapter every Thursday.Thank you so much for your lovely comments and kudos. 
> 
> As always, please comment. I love hearing your thoughts!

**Chapter 4**

 

          There were days in the life of John Hamish Watson when everything stretched too slow. Days when time languished and the very act of breathing sank too deep in his chest.

 

          Days with Sherlock were not like that.

 

          John would be grateful.

 

          Would be, if Sherlock weren’t an insufferable arse.

 

          “Yes he’s cheating on you and no it’s not with your neighbor, don’t be paranoid its - as your psychiatrist must certainly tell you often – irrational and unbecoming. Are you going to adjust that right or did the minuscule medical training from what might as well have been an online technical school by your level of – no don’t put that there, give me that I’ll do it myself!”

 

           John peeked around the observation window at the ginger nurse who was trying desperately not to cry.

 

          Better her than him.

 

          That didn’t make him a horrible person, really.

 

          More like a survivalist.

 

          “John don’t be a back seat doctor!” Sherlock barked out. “Or better yet _do_ involve your meddling sentimental self and find me someone who actually knows how to adjust an x-ray coverage garment. I’ve burnt this one out. She was better suited for handling the interns anyway. Don’t give me that look pippy longstocking, it’s evident from the smear of sparkly gel pens on your fingers who you’ve been fraternizing with-”

 

          John ducked back in the other room hiding a smile. He would help her, if intervening didn’t involve crossing the firing line.

 

          “Oh God. Please tell me _he_ is not going to become a regular fixture here.”

 

          John turned to Sarah smiling. He should sick her on Sherlock. She was certainly ballsy enough. If the possibility of the encounter backfiring didn’t entail another three weeks on the lilo out of spite he might consider it.

 

          God, he needed to get laid.

 

          “I don’t know.” John leaned forward catching her waist with a grin. “What’s in it for me to keep him away.”

 

          “The continuance of this _test-trial_ Watson.” She swatted his roaming hands away and laughed. “Not at work.”

 

          “You wound me.” John pantomimed, reaching out again.

 

          “Not. At. Work.” Sarah sandwiched the clipboard between them. “You are in a remarkably good mood. Things are better now?”

 

            “Oh God yes. He slept last night and actually ate something this morning and even managed to bring his dish to the sink instead-”

 

           “John.” Sarah leveled an unreadable expression at him. “I meant with you and, you _know_.”

 

            “Of course.” John scratched back of his neck and laughed. “Much better.”

 

            Right. Girls did not like hearing about Sherlock 24/7.

 

            No wonder he couldn’t get laid lately.

 

            “Sleeping…” Sarah frowned and drew her lips into an awkward circle. “…fully?”

 

            “Yes.” John moved the clip-board to the side and leaned in. “Thank you.”

 

            Sarah nodded. “I’m glad you filled it.”

 

            “Yes well I don’t think I could have really gone to Ella again.” John suddenly laughed. “Not after how we left things.”

 

            “I’m not your psychiatrist John.”

 

            “No, you’re better. You don’t think my life is a self destructive mess and Sherlock is worse than any addiction.” John felt Sarah attempt to disengage and moved closer. “Speaking of which, I need another favor.”

 

            Sarah stepped out of John’s embrace. “What for?”

 

            “Sherlock.” John reached for her again, seeking to smooth away look that shuttered across her face. “I need you to write him a prescription for Secobarbital.”

 

            “Have you been sharing your prescription?”

 

            “He was there when,” John paused at the gulf between what she knew and what he could possibly tell her, “when the man was blown up in front of us. He hasn’t been sleeping.”

 

            “According to you he never sleeps anyway.”

 

            “Before that was by choice, Sarah. Now he _can’t_ sleep.”

 

            “You can’t honestly believe that?”

 

            John smiled at the accusatory note in her voice and reached for her hand.

 

            “I don’t have to believe anything. I live with the git and, despite his opinion otherwise, I do notice things.”

 

            Sarah moved her hand to the clipboard. “John the man keeps body parts in the fridge and gets off on gruesome crime scenes.”

 

            “You sound like Sargent Donovan.” He reached for her again, frowning. “What’s wrong?”

 

            “You can’t honestly believe that seeing a man get blown up would affect _him_.”

 

            “It affected me.”

 

          The gas. Sherlock trembling by the fire. Trembling in his bed. The aftershock, those unwanted compulsive thoughts, memories. She didn’t understand.

 

          “John, I know he is your flat-mate but try to look at this rationally.”

 

          “He’s not just my flat-mate he’s my,” John reached out clumsily, trying to illustrate a concept that was so much _more._ “If this is about medical assessment you are welcome to ask him yourself-”

 

          “John _think_ about what you are asking.”

 

          “Do you want me to write it for him, is that it then? I am perfectly willing. I would just prefer the source to be more impersonal.”

 

          “Yes!” Sarah was waving her hands now. “That exactly. You are too close to this!”

 

          “Of course I am that is why I am asking-”

 

          “John he is a former _drug addict_!”

 

          John hissed at the sudden violation. He had confided that months ago in _confidence_. Sherlock had been stabbed and he had been worried about the morphine drip and-

 

          “Is that what you think?” He was hissing, spitting now. “That he is trying to use me for drugs?”

 

          “John,” He voice was low and soothing now and he _hated_ it. “I didn’t mean it like that. You just need to step back an take an objective look at why a man like that would claim to need-”

 

          “A man like-” John shook his head and pinched his nose. He was not fighting with Sarah over this, not in his place of work. “He didn’t claim anything. He was a wreck, a complete and utter _wreck_ and I offered.”

 

          “You offered?!”

 

          “Christ you should have seen him.” John was pleading now. If Sarah could just understand what Sherlock had been like, that haunted familiar brokenness. God, John knew what Sherlock was going through all too well. “It was horrible Sarah. I _know_. He needed it. And he is so much better now. This morning we had breakfast and joked about getting a cat. A _cat_. Can you imagine? It was so much better. Yes.”

 

          Sarah broke through his smile. “John you are too close to this.”

 

          “It is because I am close that I _understand_ what it’s like to…” John broke off. She didn’t get it. Sherlock hadn’t left him to suffer this alone. Sherlock had held him, had been playing the violin at night, had refrained from experimenting with explosives that might make sounds reminiscent of gun-fire. Sherlock, cold calculating callous Sherlock had used every resource at his disposal to help John with his PTSD, with his nightmares. And now that Sherlock shared them, John would do the same.

 

          Sarah shook her head. “I won’t write it.”

 

          “I understand.”

 

          John took a step back. He wouldn’t be mad at her. It was okay. It wasn’t her fault. She could never hope to understand what he had gone through. What Sherlock was now going through.

 

          “I’ll write it.”

 

~~~~~~~

 

            John shuffled awkwardly in the pharmacy line. Sherlock was in the restroom and he felt conspicuous without the detective to hover over (Sherlock stop opening things you aren’t going to buy!). He must look like a father waiting for his son.

 

            He was certainly old enough.

 

            John glanced at the boy one aisle over pleading for candy and grimaced. If his family was closer his sister might be bothering him for nieces and nephews. His father was long gone to alcoholism, his mother following close behind. Harry was…well Harry. Who else would carry on the Watson family name?

 

            John suddenly felt very inadequate.

 

            He turned to move away from the toy aisle. This would never do. This is why he and Sherlock needed a case. This pointless ruminating just led him to black places he had no business returning to. He was a soldier. There was no point in wondering and wallowing. Action. That’s what he needed.

 

            He had almost forgiven Sherlock for the lab. Funny how Sarah had helped with that. It had been childish for him to hold it against Sherlock. He _knew_ what it was like to first feel your mind shatter with fear. When you could no longer trust yourself, when your body betrayed you and your mind screamed with relentless compulsive unwanted thoughts.

 

            John looked at his leg and grimaced.

 

            Childish was right in more than one sense. Of course Sherlock, being a bloody child, had tried to figure things out in the most childish way possible. He couldn’t have known what it would do to John. He had just discovered fear, how could he possibly appreciate its consequences?

 

            He knew now. He had gotten almost everything about John before, and now he got _this._ Afghanistan. The fear. It was…good. Yes.

 

            In a sick way, sharing this made everything so much _more_.

 

            John dodged the boy as he darted in the next aisle. The child was snatching items of the racks and hurling them to the ground in a fit of sugar induced rage.

 

            John bent over, aiming to shelve the items again, when one caught his eye.

 

            It was utterly ridiculous. Beyond tacky. Sherlock would _hate_ it.

           

          Oh perfect.

 

            He returned to the counter. The shop girl boxing and wrapping the item just before Sherlock returned.

 

            Sherlock glared at the brightly wrapped box.

 

            “What’s that?”

 

            John offered an easy grin.

 

            “You can’t tell?”

 

            “It’s hard to observe anything under layers of chartreuse paper and glitter.” Sherlock wrinkled his nose in disgust. “I deduce you are being sentimental and childish. Clearly a prank.”

 

            “Well it’s not for Ms. Hudson” John was grinning broadly now “chartreuse drains her.”

 

            “Yes John, because garish colors are perfectly capable of reducing the vitality of the people who wear them. That must be why we dress children so brightly.” Sherlock glared at the boy running through the aisle. “Their parents want to put them in a coma.”

 

            “You never wore bright colors as a kid?”

 

           John imagined Sherlock running around in neon sneakers clutching garish stuffed animals. Oh if it were only true he would kill for pictures!

 

          “Hardly.”

 

          “What would you dress your children in then?”

 

          Sherlock wrinkled his nose in distaste.

 

          “Straight jackets.”

 

          John laughed. Sherlock with children: all sticky and noisy and interrupting his experiments. He suspected Sherlock would be the one who would need the straight jacket.

 

          “Your parental instincts are appalling.” John handed Sherlock the box. “Consider it a peace offering.”

 

            “Peace offerings shouldn’t be covered in glitter. That’s a declaration of war.”

 

            “Well, I _did_ invade Afghanistan.”

 

            “I’m fairly sure Mycroft had more say in that disastrous decision than you.”

 

            “Are you suggesting the mighty Mycroft made an error in judgment?”

 

            “My brother’s very conception was an error in judgment.”

 

          John smiled as Sherlock hailed a cab, trailing glitter in the autumn air.

 

          Everything would be fine.

 

~~~~

 

            Sherlock sat picking at the splint on his left hand. John wondered how long it would last before Sherlock got bored and tossed the thing.

 

            Three days tops.

 

          John slid his fingers across the nicks in the dining room table. He would have to bring the subject up now that they were back from the pharmacy. He had signed the prescription. He was now technically Sherlock’s doctor.

 

          “Do you think we should redecorate?”

 

          Or he could avoid the subject. That worked too.

 

          “What possible purpose could that serve John?”

 

            The state of the flat really did bother him. He liked things neater. Maybe new shelving units would help.

 

          “Well besides the holes in the wall and the sword marks on the furniture, we have a ton of stuff and not a lot of storage space.”

 

          “This is coming from the man who wears oatmeal sweaters and reindeer jumpers.”

 

          “I like my jumpers.”

 

          “How anyone mistakes you for gay John, is beyond me.”

 

          “You’re not the only one it baffles.”

 

          Sherlock leveled John with another one of _those_ stares. The ones that weren’t strictly polite and spoke volumes about Sherlock’s obliviousness to concepts like ‘personal space’ and ‘appropriate social interaction’.

 

          The room was suddenly claustrophobic. John went about organizing the books stacked on the table in an attempt not to meet Sherlock’s eyes.

 

          “About the Secobarbital…” Oh God, had Sherlock left food under the papers?

 

          Sherlock waved a dismissive hand. “Yes. Yes. Not for recreational use. Stop! Don’t touch that. Must you be so obvious?”

 

          “I’m your doctor.” John trashed it anyways. “We need a biohazard bin.”

 

          “No, you are an anxious friend hysterical at the thought of me using in a dark alley trading sexual favors for drugs.”

 

          “You’re the one hysterical.” John crossed his arms. Sherlock was now anxiously riffling through the trash trying to retrieve whatever that _thing_ had been. “An alley? You wouldn’t.”

 

          “Prostitute the transport?” Sherlock snorted and rolled his eyes. “When pick pocketing is so easy? Insulting.”

 

          John fidgeted with the papers. They never talked about Sherlock’s drug years.

 

          “Yes, well, not for recreational use.”

 

           “Obviously.” Sherlock continued riffling through the bin.

 

          “Just to help you sleep.”

 

          “I don’t need _help_.”

 

          “Then bin the prescription.”

 

          Sherlock looked up from the trash at the bottle of pills on the counter. John suddenly worried he had pushed too far, Sherlock might bin it out of spite – a way to prove that his mind could handle _anything._

 

          “If at all possible after the first week try not to take them every night.” John snatched the bottle up and headed for the medicine cabinet. “They will be in here and I _will_ be counting them every day. Don’t think you can take too many to get high.”

 

          He would protect Sherlock from self-sabotage.

 

          “Insulting.” Sherlock snorted. “Besides, I don’t sleep every night anyways.”

 

          John popped his head out of the bathroom.

 

          “Well this is a perfect chance for you to start.”

 

          “Boring.”

 

          “Sherlock” John circled back to the kitchen where Sherlock was attempting to wash his hands around the splint. “I am trusting you.”

 

          John placed a hand on the detective’s shoulder and met his eyes. There couldn’t be any guile. He would bin the bottle himself if he thought Sherlock even remotely wanted this. If he hadn’t seen _that_ , the thing so familiar and lost in his friend’s eyes the past few days it made him ache.

 

          Sherlock had gotten a taste of fear, of what Afghanistan represented, of sleepless nights and wretched days.

 

          John couldn’t bare to return to that place, let alone watch his best friend go through it.

 

          “John, you know I like speed. That’s the only reason you are giving me a barbiturate, albeit a strong one.”

 

          Sherlock’s voice was a low indignant baritone.

 

          “Recreationally taking something that would impede my ability to think during waking hours - something that would make me _less_ rational – the thought is disgusting. Abhorrent.”

 

          John squeezed Sherlock’s shoulder. It was true. Even though he said he trusted Sherlock, he thought their friendship was strong enough, that Sherlock could abstain from abusing…

 

          The truth, whole and simple, was that this wasn’t Sherlock’s type of drug.

 

          John was a pragmatist after all.

 

          “Of course.” John squeezed again. “Right.”

 

          If the solution had been cocaine then Sherlock would have to get used to never sleeping again. If the solution had been _anything_ stronger than sleeping pills John never would have considered it.

 

          “I’m not a junkie John.” Sherlock shrugged John’s hand off. His voice was harder now.

 

          “I know.” John faltered. Conversations like this weren’t his area. How was this so much harder than bedside? “I just don’t understand… _that_.”

 

            _Cocaine._

          Sherlock turned towards John, his lips parted in something that resembled uncertainty. The air was suddenly heavy with something tight and thick. John struggled to swallow, the sensation unfamiliar and painful.

 

          “It was before the work.” Sherlock’s voice lacked something essential. “Everything needs a purpose.”

 

          John nodded. Memories of drifting after the army. Sitting in a drab flat in London with a cane and a psychosomatic limp. Memories of drifting like a ghost in a waking dream, living like a dying man. Lost, useless in this civilian world of pleasantries and safety.

 

          John leaned in, searching Sherlock’s face in recognition.

 

          Purpose.

 

          Sherlock desperately needed meaning in his life. Something to live for.

 

          That John could understand.

 

          “The work is infinitely better.” Sherlock waved a dismissive hand and the moment was over. The room was bright and John exhaled easily, wondering how it ever had felt small and close.

 

          “Curry for dinner?”

 

          Sherlock hurled himself on the couch in a flash of petulance.

 

          “Curry again?” He was whining like a child and John was grinning like a madman. “No. I want Thai.”

 

          John laughed and went to order dinner.

 

~~~~


	5. The Origin of Creation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John stood there, on the threshold of something palpable and raw. Sherlock laid there, fingers poised in thought as if he would rip the answers from the very threads of the universe.
> 
> He looked up, grey eyes scanning as John felt every stark detail stripped from him with each breath. The intimacy of the invasion burned and John felt the question hang between them. The secret cleaved from his flesh and silence.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi all, this might actually be my one of my favorite chapter's so please enjoy!
> 
> As always please please please leave comments. I love reading them and they really help inspire me to finish this fic!

**Chapter 5**

 

 

 

And I descend from grace  
In arms of undertow  
I will take my place  
In the great below

\- ‘The Great Below’ – Nine Inch Nails

 

            Sherlock Holmes was mad as a hatter.

 

            If he had been part of King Priam’s household in Troy they would have said ‘Oh Cassandra dear, avoid that Holmes fellow. His ideas are a _bit not good_.’

 

            Mad scientist didn’t begin to cut it. Slice it. Toss and dice it like hibachi in a hurricane.

 

            He was humming an orchestra of happiness. He needed another set of vocal chords to arrange this symphony. A magnum opus of cleverness because that’s what he was.

 

            John had written him a prescription for Secobarbital.

           

            Not that he wanted the Secobarbital in particular. He had tried it the other night and it had helped him sleep, as promised. Boring.

 

           And not that he had any desire to exceed the recommended dose to get stoned off his rocker (after the experimental try of course). Pedestrian, really.

 

            No he wanted what the Secobarbital could become. Which was _anything._

Tranquilizer dart? Maybe? Knock out gas? Possibly? Hallucinogenic? Goody!

 

            Ever since those years of tedium (really, what was a mind like his _expected_ to do before the work?) Mycroft had been worse than a fat mother hen. Every bit of chemicals he bought was tracked and measured and monitored.

 

           Christ you would think he was a _terrorist_ by the level of security around Sherlock Holmes acquiring anything on the periodic table!

 

           And while hospitals and pharmacies and hardware stores were painfully easy to steal from, Mycroft and his CTV swarm always seemed to know. Any underhanded pilfering or black-market buying and Sherlock’s bank account always shrunk painfully. And Sherlock couldn’t be expected to get a _real_ _job_ could he?

 

           Bloody Mycroft. Always getting in the way of science!

 

           So Sherlock had acquiesced (mostly) and focused his experiments in other, less pharmaceutical areas.

 

           But now John had handed him the perfect opportunity for science and all sorts of fun. His brilliant, beautiful flat-mate was truly indispensible.

 

           So Sherlock hummed and grinned and cackled as he opened the door to 221 B, part one of his brilliant plan sloshing in his arms.

           

            “Good morning John!”

 

            John was at the breakfast table, neat and prim and oh so unsuspecting in a jumper that matched his oatmeal.

 

            “Oh God Sherlock…”

 

            _Oh yes indeed!_

John dropped the oatmeal on the floor. He would have to clean that up of course. Sherlock didn’t clean.

 

           “I thought we were getting a dog?”

 

            Sherlock kicked the door closed behind him and grinned like a court jester.

 

           “This is _like_ a dog.”

 

            John was clutching his heart.          

 

           “No. Its. Not.”

 

           “No? Bollocks. Oh well. Guess we will have to take him in anyway.”

           

            Was Sherlock singing again? Maybe.

 

           “We are NOT keeping an electric _eel_ in the apartment.”

 

            Was John shouting hysterically? Possibly.

 

           “I whole heartedly agree. Thankfully _Electrophorus electricus_ are knifefish, not eels. Bit of a naming misnomer. Don’t feel too much like an idiot John. Understandable mistake.”

 

           “ _Sherlock!_ ”

 

            It was too easy. If Sherlock weren’t balancing an empty 227-liter tank and a bag with a knifefish in his arms he might have time to feel bad. John was at such a fundamental disadvantage.

 

           “Honestly John. If anything you should be _relieved_ I picked something in a tank.”

 

           “That’s not the—actually, you know what? You’re right. Keep your damn eel-”

 

           “Knifefish.”

 

           “-but it goes in _your_ bedroom!”

 

           Victory! Sherlock’s face blossomed into a brilliant grin as he chortled with glee.

 

           “Splendid. I think I’ll name the bugger Mycroft and not feed him for a week. Just like old times!”

 

            _Phase one: complete._

 

           John was left standing in the kitchen, oatmeal dripping off his sleeve.

 

           “Wait, what?”

 

~~~

            The hum of the filter was comforting.

           

Sherlock had been building the tank all afternoon. It was finished, glowing and gurgling and he was struck by an inexplicable, irrational fondness.

 

            It was beautiful.

 

            The fish darting through bits of shell in flashes of silver and blue. The rocks nestled in the sand, resting on the bones of their brothers.

 

            _Ashes to ashes._

 

            He would get plants. Slimy and green, they would dapple and sway in some primordial dance. A dance of microorganisms and mitochondria humming and swimming and emerging from some distant sea in a flash of life.

 

            They would be like something _precious_ and _lost_.

 

And suddenly he was six again, escaping from Mycroft and sunscreen at the beach to stand freckled and pale in the surf. He was six and he couldn’t breathe, his mind was white and irrelevant because he could _hear_ _it._ Standing knee deep in the belly of evolution, he could hear the mitosis of creation, the sound of life birthing and dividing out of cellular ooze, separating and dying, birthing and crawling from the ocean in fragile little stages.

 

And Sherlock wanted to cradle it, wanted to stand there forever with kelp on his ankles and salt in his lungs and _listen._ Because for the first time in his life there was something grander than him.

 

            _Dust to dust._

And the ocean stretched impossibly far: deep and churning, endless and black like creation. And he was swimming out to the source of it. And Mycroft had dived in, screaming unintelligible nonsense - because it was _all nonsense_ \- and had ripped him out of the womb, had ripped him out of the water clothed in kelp and crowned in salt and he had cried. Cried because he was so small and everything so great and beautiful.

 

            Cried because he knew. Knew the moment he heard the sound of waves, that no matter how great he grew he would never understand _it all_.

           

            Sherlock pressed his face to the glass of the tank and gasped.

 

            _What the hell?_

 

            “How is Mycroft doing?”

 

            Sherlock looked up and forced his hands to unclench. John was at the door. He suddenly felt naked and ridiculous (the stigma of nudity is a social construct: irrational) and itched to scream at John, to throw him out of his bedroom and smash the tank, watch it bleed sand and salt.

 

            “He is hiding.”

 

            John frowned and walked over to the tank. “Shouldn’t he be out doing eely things and electrocuting the other fish?”

 

            Sherlock snorted, tension draining from his shoulders. It was fine. It had to be fine. It was only John.

 

“Eely things John? Please try to remember for my sanity and your health Mycroft is a Knifefish. And no, _Knifefish_ are notoriously shy and adamantly nocturnal.”

 

            John crouched down next to Sherlock, brushing his shoulder in attempt to get a better view of the fish in question. “Saving his strength to be a nightlight, huh?”

 

            Sherlock forced an eye roll and grasped for the appropriate response. The room was so small and John was too bright.

 

            “Jealous it will compete with your monstrosity?” Snark. Yes. Sharp and biting and he was grasping at the present, the wool of john’s jumper itchy against his wrist.

 

            John laughed and clapped Sherlock on the back, the warmth bleeding through the dressing gown in a rush of goose bumps and sudden irritation. Irrational. Sherlock shook his head.

 

            “Where did you put my present anyways?”

 

John was looking around now, clearly seconds away from conducting a search for that hideous excuse for a ‘peace offering’.

 

            Sherlock tilted his head to the desk and resumed remodeling the filtration system. John broke out in what Sherlock would like to imagine was a vindictive grin and promptly fished out the wretched bumblebee nightlight jammed in the far drawer.

 

            “I’m surprised you didn’t throw it away.” John did look surprised.

 

Not surprised enough to resist plugging the damn thing in though.

 

            “I was saving it to fish out in front of your next girlfriend, destroying your masculine credibility with stories concerning your need of nightlights and your tendency to woo your male flat-mates with gifts.”

 

            John gave a dry chuckle. “If that’s my idea of wooing then I deserve my rotten dating luck.”

 

            Sherlock bit down a smile. It was supposed to be inappropriate or some other nonsense to approve of John’s perpetual singleness. Not that he cared for such social niceties. Not at all. But it was best not provoke John right before he demanded something.

 

            “Right,” Sherlock stood in anticipation of phase two of his undeniably genius plan. “You need to pick up these items.”

 

            John gave an incredulous stare at the list Sherlock whipped out of his sleeve with a flourish.

 

           “I need to?”

 

           “Yes John.” Sherlock waved a dismissive hand. “Lovely chat. Off you go.”

 

            John eyed the list and licked his lips. Sherlock quickly averted his gaze. “Right, okay. Are you replacing this tank?”

 

            “Improving would be a more apt term.” Sherlock’s head still itched. Something wasn’t right.

 

“Half of this stuff looks like robotics equipment.” John wrinkled his nose. “And what’s with all the chemicals?”

 

            “Filtration systems. I’m thinking of adding a reef and the pumps they sell on the market might as well be designed by Neanderthals.” Sherlock waved part of the tank’s motor for emphasis. Focus on the task at hand, yes. “Macrobiotic life requires very specific PH balances and currents to simulate natural conditions. Your local tropical fish store should have the majority of the list. Use the internet and my card for the rest.”

 

            “Sherlock, I have a date with Sarah tonight.”

 

            Sherlock bit down the irrational surge of jealous glee at the thought of sabotaging John’s plans. Clearly reminiscing about the ocean was clouding his thoughts with misplaced affection. He might need to get rid of the tank sooner than planned. Bad for brainwork.

 

            “Cancel it.” Don’t smile. Tempting, but don’t smile.

 

            “Sherlock, no.” John planted his feet in a ridiculously ineffective military posture. As if Sherlock would be intimidated.

 

            “I would get everything myself-” _blatant lie_ “but I have to reroute the heating pumps. The water needs to stay at 30.5 Celsius and it keeps climbing.”

 

            “So stay here and fix the bloody pump!”

 

            “Can’t. The PH levels are completely off and the level of chlorine in that water is still at toxic levels despite the drops. If I don’t reduce the acidity everything will die.”

 

            “Are you telling me-”

 

           John’s teeth were grinding in frustration. Sherlock tried not to think about sand for his tank made out of ground human teeth and bones. It would be surprisingly poetic.

 

           “-that if you don’t leave to get the chemicals the fish will die-”

 

           Sherlock grinned at the imagery. He could create the cradle of life on the ocean floor in his tank and decorate it with the bones of the species these tiny macrobiotic cells had evolved into.

 

           “-but if you leave and don’t fix the pump the fish will die-”

 

           Sherlock wished he had his baby teeth. Or better yet John’s. Their bones could build Sherlock’s little oceanic Eden. It was disturbingly sentimental.

 

           “-I can’t even - why the hell would you build something so time intensive with our life style?!”

 

           “The skull! Of course!” Sherlock jumped up and dashed out to the mantle place, bright with his sudden epiphany.

 

           “Wait what?” John already looked utterly bewildered. “Sherlock are you listening?  You can’t just buy pets and then blackmail me into caring for them!”

 

           “Hmmmm? Of course.” Sherlock returned with the skull, rolling up his sleeve to place the object in the tank. “Not as good as teeth, but a very nice home for Mycroft.”

 

           “Teeth?”

 

           “Mmmmhmmm.” Sherlock watched Mycroft swim through the eyes and nestle in the cranium with rapt fascination. “Baby teeth. Our bones are much better than strangers for building creation.”

 

           John sighed, his face softening at something subtle and surely not worth Sherlock’s attention.

 

           “Looks more like a home than creation.” John’s voice was heavy murmur.

 

           Sherlock repressed a sharp retort. John couldn’t be expected to understand the magnitude of the sea. Sherlock didn’t want to share it anyways.

 

           Sherlock tilted his head. Better respond with something obvious and sentimental, something more on John’s level.

 

           “Aren’t our homes the basis of our creation?”

 

           John inhaled sharply and Sherlock wondered at the stricken look that crumpled the doctor’s face. He leaned in towards John, eyes locking as he tried to place the look of turmoil, the tentative bite of the lip and dilation of the pupils. He smelled like dandruff and tea and what was-

 

           “Sherlock…don’t.” And suddenly John had a hand pushed against Sherlock’s chest, pulse elevated and trembling. Sherlock frowned.

 

           “Why-” And Sherlock was going to ask why John was suddenly so afraid. Why was the concept of home a Pandora’s box when he knew the doctor had had a happy one? Why was John broadcasting fear, longing, and panic?

 

           And it should be obvious, it was obvious, and Sherlock knew he should recognize these symptoms in his catalogue of human behavior – but his head was suddenly soft and his skin did not fit right and the thud of John’s frantic pulse against his chest was humming with the filter and drowning thought in something - _something_ – dulling and muddy and he must rip it off and stretch it thin and tangible and _think think THINK!_

           “I’ve got to meet up with Sarah!” And John was shouting and then gone - the shrill declaration hanging in the room as if the air was heavy enough to hold the words in his wake.

 

           Sherlock hissed. Hissed and growled because he still couldn’t think. Think! Something had triggered John. Some memory of home had made John sick with a longing he feared and something was off about Sherlock’s analysis but all he could hear was the hammering of his heart and the sound of the ocean.

 

           This was wrong.

 

            This whole day had turned wrong. How had this turned into nostalgia and sentiment and _why couldn’t he think?!_

 

            It was the tank. It had to be. This idea of ocean and all it represented was clouding his mind with memories and feelings long since buried. But that in and of itself was wrong.

 

           Sherlock did not remember his childhood.

 

           Not emotionally.

 

            His history existed in a series of mental snapshots. Random images whose repetition he had been unable to delete. Sherlock had never been a child, the experience trivial and promptly removed in his twenties. Surly Sherly (Mycroft’s nickname) had never existed. There was the mahogany gaming table, the Persian Tabriz at the bottom of the stairs, beveled windowpanes with tiny bubbles the way old glass had once been blown. A museum catalogue of objects in his mind.

 

            Never a scene. Never a _sensation_.

 

            Childhood memories served no purpose. The fact there was such a large one sitting there hoarding space and carrying _something_ tender on his pragmatic hard drive was inherently hateful. The fact that he had failed to delete one was deeply disturbing.

No. Wrong.

 

Something twisted deep in Sherlock’s belly. He didn’t fail to delete it. It was fresh, new and still wet, filling his mind palace with the smell of salt and brine.

 

            He didn’t fail to delete it at all.

 

            The memory had come back.

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

Author's Notes:

 

Thanks to the incredible and immensely talented whimsycatcher there is now fanart of this chapter you can view [HERE](http://whimsycatcher.tumblr.com/post/141317849048)! 


	6. One hundred and Eleven Times

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John stood there, on the threshold of something palpable and raw. Sherlock laid there, fingers poised in thought as if he would rip the answers from the very threads of the universe.
> 
> He looked up, grey eyes scanning as John felt every stark detail stripped from him with each breath. The intimacy of the invasion burned and John felt the question hang between them. The secret cleaved from his flesh and silence.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi everyone, sorry about the delay! We got hit with a pretty bad snowstorm last week and after I got power back I still had to finish my final edits.
> 
> Still not entirely happy with the edits made to this chapter, but my Muse is finicky and I just can't seem to get it right (in my eyes at least).
> 
> For everyone who is wondering the case fic bit starts in chapter 8. Also there will be references to Mary Morstan - I started writing this before season 3 and in this universe she is an important element of his past.
> 
> Thanks for all the support on my first fic. As always leave your comments, I love reading them! <3

**Chapter 6**

 

I'm a slow dying flower  
Frost killing hour  
The sweet turning sour  
And untouchable

~Natalie Merchant ‘My Skin’

 

            If John was being optimistic he would say this is the way he was now. He was a rational man. He liked order, and systems, and action. He used to be the thoughtful type, but since the war he couldn’t stay still. Stillness was…undesirable. So he reacted.

 

            He had become a cat. An expert at thinking on his feet.

 

            But if John was being truthful, the deep dark truth that lingered and pulled, there were certain things he did not want to think about.

 

            There were certain sides of him he desperately wanted to ignore and bury.

 

            And not all of them stemmed from Afghanistan.

           

            “John?”

 

            John did not want to be truthful right now. He wanted to be fine. He wanted to be sure of everything that was normal and sane in his life.

 

            “Flowers! I didn’t expe-.”

 

            And he was on Sarah’s steps, fingers in her hair, devouring her lips because he needed _this_.

 

            “I couldn’t wait. I needed to see you.” And he was on her neck and it was true. He could _eat_ her. She would make everything clear because he wanted her. She was all soft and lavender…

 

            “John” And she grabbed his face with something mischievous in her eyes. And she was leaning in to kiss him again. Leaning in to put everything in order and-

 

            “John?” Her fingers were still and he was straining to bridge the gap. If he could only kiss her again. “No, John, wait. What happened?”

 

            Sarah had pulled back. John frowned.

 

            “I can’t surprise an irresistible woman by showing up early for our date?” And he was smiling. She _was_ irresistible right now. She was perfect.

 

            But no. Sarah was frowning and looking too close. God, why did everyone in his life lately pin him with _that_ stare?

 

            “No. Nope, three continents Watson.” Sarah took a step back. John smiled on reflex. “You are usually smoother than this.”

 

            “Bringing you flowers before our date and snogging you senseless because I can’t stand how good you look in that dress isn’t smooth?” He was leaning in, murmuring against her ear. “You’re right, I’ve always been more the devilish rake sort.”

 

            Sarah shuddered and licked her lips. The utter femininity of her response lit something starving in him. John leaned in again.

 

            God he needed this.

 

            “No,” Sarah shook her head and stepped back again. “No, you always combine that charming everyman nice guy act with a bit of mischief. You _underplay_ it to get girls to relax.”

 

            John was laughing, trying not to wince at how the sound echoed needily. Right. He was coming on too strong.

 

            “Been taking notes have you?” The way she relaxed at his smile was all he needed.

 

            “I’m sorry. It’s been a rough day with Sherlock.” He reached out to kiss her hand. “Will you let me make it up to you with a fantastic dinner as planned?”

 

            “Rough day with… Oh God is there an issue with Sherlock and the Secobarbital?”

 

            “No.” John fought down the sudden bloom of hurt and frustration. This wasn’t what he planned. “Why is that the first thing you assu- nevermind. Sherlock got himself a bloody fish tank and he’s strangely sentimental about it-”

 

            John paused. What could he possibly say about that moment? The moment that drove him to buy flowers and show up at Sarah’s an hour early.

 

            That moment where Sherlock had leaned in and he thought –

 

            John shook his head. “You know. Sherlock stuff.” He grinned and reached to tuck Sarah’s hair back. “You hardly need a recap on why he’s frustrating.”

 

            Sarah drew back, something strange flickering in her eyes. “He’s sentimental about a fish tank. Sherlock?”

 

            “Well, it’s less of a fish tank and more an Aquarium worthy exhibit with an electric bloody eel.” Sarah was cautiously smiling. John was laughing now. She really was so lovely. “Figures the madman would go about homemaking in the weirdest way possible.”

 

            “Homemaking?” Sarah was laughing and drawing close again. John felt warm with relief. “Sherlock?”

 

“Yes. If I wasn’t describing Sherlock I would call it nesting. He kept talking about the creation of a home.” John nuzzled her hair and chuckled. “Only his version of domesticity would feature a deadly eel.”

 

            “So that’s it.” She was humming in satisfaction and John felt his hackles raise at the sound.

 

            He pulled back and looked at her. He forced a smile. Something was wrong.

 

            “Dinner then?” He suddenly needed to move. The hallway was claustrophobic.

 

            “John.” She was shaking her head and he _knew_ that tone. “Stop this.”

 

            “Sarah.” She wasn’t about to. No. It was all going so well. “Don’t take that – if something is wrong I’ll fix it. I will. I _want_ this. Just tell what you need from me.”

 

            “I need you to _not_ be attracted to your flat-mate.”

 

            John looked at her.

 

            And then laughed.

 

            “Is that it?” The relief was overwhelming. “I would think you of all people would know I don’t swing that way for him but if you need me to say it-”

 

            “I don’t need you to say _anything_ John. I _know_.”

 

            John stopped laughing.

 

            “You can’t be serious.”

 

            “John we don’t have to talk about this. Lets just leave it lie.”

 

            “You can’t dump me _again_ , imply that I’m lusting after my best friend, and then say lets leave it at that!”

 

            “John, I get it all right. You’re just too mixed up for me, okay? You just need to be on your own to figure out you and Sherlock.”

 

“You know, I am getting really tired of these gay jokes.”

 

            “Well maybe you should start reconsidering-“ Sarah sighed, and pinched her nose. “I’m sorry, that was harsh. I know this can’t be easy for you. But it’s not fair to use me as a buffer for your heterosexuality.”

 

            “You think I am using you as a beard?!”

 

            Pure frustration now. John tried to clamp down on it. This was not the first breakup centered around his ‘relationship’ to Sherlock. But Sarah! She should know him better than that.

 

            “No John. A beard implies a deliberate façade. You _want_ to have a relationship with me.”

 

            “Then what is the bloody problem?!”

 

            “You only want it to _prove_ to yourself that you and Sherlock don’t have this…this _thing!_ ”

 

            John wondered how her words, soft and pleading, could feel so offensive. He tried to check his frustration. Anger would get him nowhere.

 

            “You drop everything for him. You build your life around him. And when he starts talking about building a home with you– something you two clearly already have together – you freak out and pounce on me as if to prove _this_ is what you really want.”

 

            Sarah was crying now. John felt like he should hold her, but something cold lodged in his throat. He tasted bile. He shook his head. He was being uncharitable. This was just another in a serious of misunderstandings. He reached out to comfort her.

 

            “You’re taking the conversation out of context. It wasn’t about building a home with me it was- Never mind. You act like I am some closeted case.” John’s voice was soothing mummer as he stroked her hair. “For Christ’s sake my sister is gay. I’ve been in the military. I’m pretty comfortable with the spectrum of sexuality. I think I would _know_ if I fancied a particular bloke. Specifically one I live with.”

 

            John smiled. This would all be fine. It had to be.

 

            “John, I’m not saying you are gay.” Sarah shook her head and stepped back. “I-I don’t know what you are. Okay? It’s just you and Sherlock have this _thing,_ and I can’t, _none of us_ can compete with it, whatever the hell it is!”

 

            She was gripping his shoulder and John wondered why he couldn’t feel it. Why couldn’t she get this?

 

            “I’m not angry, okay? I’m not saying I get what is between you two. I know there is something with comrades and arms and your limp and- Christ I can’t even. Look I don’t understand it. Okay. Fine. But _you don’t get it either._ And that is a problem. You need to figure out what your relationship to Sherlock Holmes is and _deal with it_. Because it sure as hell isn’t colleagues and flat-mates.”

 

            Something heavy constricted John’s chest. She didn’t…

 

            So it was truly over then. He was moving out of her doorway. There was no salvaging this.

 

            “You’re right. He’s more than that. He’s like a brother.” John’s voice was longing and distant. “The only thing you don’t get is what it’s like to fight next to someone. To almost die with someone. The bond it takes to trust someone with your life on a _daily_ basis. A bond you are misunderstanding.”

 

            And he was walking away. And he should be mad, really. But it was Sarah. He could only taste regret. He honestly cared for her. And it wasn’t her fault. How could she hope to understand?

 

            This wasn’t personal.

 

            “John. I really do care for you.” Sarah reached out, hesitating. Something flashed in her eyes and she straightened up. “This is coming from the heart. When I tell you this. Please. Just listen-”

 

            Sarah’s voice strengthened with sudden resolve He was turning back, one last look because that voice, that unlikely strength coupled with her softness is what drew him to her in the first place.

 

            “My father was in the Korean war. I did my clinical residency in the Veteran’s hospital. I’ve _seen_ those bonds.”

 

            John inexplicably tasted bile.

 

            “Yours are _different_.”

 

~~~~~

 

 

            Harry used to joke that she would only live on a ground floor apartment. That after the 12 steps of AA, she would never relive a metaphorical process of self-actualization just to reach the bloody front door.

 

            221B had seventeen steps.

 

            Maybe John needed the extra five.

 

            Or maybe self-examination for a war veteran pushing his late thirties involved with a high functioning sociopath was a death sentence.

 

            It certainly felt like one.

 

            He wanted to go upstairs. Not just the seventeen steps, but also the last stretch straight to his bedroom. A bedroom absent Sherlock, and Sarah, and all the churning fragments of his wrecked life.

 

            But there was only one bathroom. And only one medicine cabinet.

 

            And so John turned the apartment key. Because he was a soldier.

 

            And of course Sherlock was on the couch. Because John was cursed.

 

            John stood there, on the threshold of something palpable and raw. Sherlock laid there, fingers poised in thought as if he would rip the answers from the very threads of the universe. And then he looked up, grey eyes scanning as John felt every stark detail stripped from him with each breath. A secret cleaved from his flesh and silence. The intimacy of the invasion burned, and John bit back something jagged.

 

            “She broke up with you.”

 

            It was a statement, not a question. And suddenly John wished he lived somewhere else. Someplace where his heart wasn’t continually stripped and laid out for examination. He turned to cut through the kitchen and stopped.

 

            There. Plugged in by the fireplace.

 

The tacky bumble bee night-light.

 

            It looked like a morbidly obese firefly, suspended against the wall all yellow and absurdly fuzzy.

 

            “Sherlock-” John faltered. He wasn’t even sure what he wanted to say.

           

            He took a step foreword, stomach twisting tightly into something not quite painful.

 

            “The bee.” John clenched a fist, as if he could summon the right words by will. “Why?”

 

            Sherlock slumped over, suddenly tired and thin. And John wondered how anyone could look so old yet angelic.

 

            “My head.” Sherlock waved his hands as if to banish something. “Nothing is right.”

 

            John felt his throat close up. And he wanted to grab Sherlock by the shoulders and scream, because for once neither had the answer. And Christ he felt the draw of what must be _empathy_ because in all of this wreckage Sherlock sat just as lost with a bloody glowing bumblebee.

 

            And this desire to speak was unbearable.

 

            But what to even say? What did John even want?

 

            The seconds howled in and John knew he had to leave.

 

            But all that came out was a half strangled “Why?”

 

            Sherlock looked up and frowned.

 

            “Why indeed?” He murmured.

 

            And that was even worse. There was too much to read behind those words. Too many shades of meaning, assuming they were even sharing the same conversation.

 

            John turned to go.

 

            Because he had known his bones would pop and fingers break if he didn’t speak.

 

            And all he had said was ‘why?’

 

~~~

 

_John was in a poppy field. Waves of undulating red pulsing like a throbbing heart. White granite paths cut across like bone, and he was on his back, grasping green stalks and crying._

_His shoulder was bleeding out._

_“Soldier boy soldier man.” Suddenly there was a little girl over him singing in Dari. “Poppies to forget. Poppies like gold.”_

_And she was dancing, hair crowned in a wreath of poppies bleeding into her scalp in long jagged scratches._

_“Shot.” He was crying and gasping. “Send help. I’ve been shot.”_

_She peered over him. Flipping his blood crusted collar with harsh distain._

_“No good.” She was singing again, her voice shrill and thin. “Wilting like a nasty weed?”_

_“Stop it.” John was crying, trying to stench the blood flow with broken fingers. “Please God…let me live.”_

_“Like frost on the ground.” She was shedding petals in sheaths of red. “You’re a slow dying flower. A slow dying fly.”_

_And she was looting him like a corpse - removing his shoes, gun, and dog tags._

_“Can you pay my dowry, fair fly?” And she was laughing as she began to choke him. “Not dead yet my poppy?”_

_“Get off him.” Glass cracked underfoot, and Sherlock suddenly stood hissing above them. “You can’t marry her!”_

_John wanted to cry, scream out that he couldn’t breathe let alone marry but the poppies were giggling and gossiping. They said he had a PTSD and would be an awful match._

_Hateful poppies were sprouting up from his skin in blooms of red and green. And he was snatching them out, tearing apart tissue and flesh._

_“The bullet is in the other shoulder, John.” Sherlock rolled his eyes, grabbing a handful of poppies attached to John’s right kidney._

_“Stop it!” The little girl was screaming now. “He can’t settle down without his kidney! He needs it to filter the poison you see? Father! Father! Come quick!”_

_The poppy flowers leaned away from her screams, faces scandalized._

_Mathews came running through the flowers, torso half gone, dropping lit matches on the blooms with glee. He crouched down, helping strip John with hungry hands. John felt the brush of scabs against his thigh and bit back a moan._

_“Darling girl, darling child.” Mathews was over him now, grinding his hips to John as he kissed bites down his neck. “You found the apple of my eye.”_

_Sherlock sat to the side, crouched and watching with curious eyes. “Johnny Boy.” He frowned. “Don’t you have a fiancé back home?”_

_John felt Mathew’s hand over his groin, nervous and secretive, and he was so close to release and he wanted it - soft hair and warm brown eyes and hands that- No! Not in front of the little girl. Not in front of Sherlock._

_“Send help.” He sobbed, thrusting his hips up. “Please God let me…”_

_“They won’t be back for an hour.” Mathews was on his shoulder, sucking the bullet out in long hard strokes. John was dizzy with the rutting. “Calm down. I’m here. It’s alright.”_

_And John shuddered and gasped. Something bled forth from his groin and he turned his head with guilt._

_“Christ man, get up. Its okay. This didn’t mean anything. Sometimes it’s all you can do not to break.” And now Mathews was ripping out his own kidney, blackened with rot, and shoving it between John’s broken ribs. “I’ve got you. It’s okay. You’ve got to go back and have a normal life.”_

_“Mary.” John was crying and Mathews had started kissing and thrusting again, his strokes slow and languid. “Please God let me…”_

_“John’s not normal.” Sherlock swept in like an avenging angel, tearing Mathews off John and snapping his neck with a sickening crack. “My little fly drank from me.”_

_Mathews crumpled to the ground, faces split in a blackened grin. John was howling, lunging at Sherlock, nails ripping his skin off in strips of red confetti._

_“I needed him! Don’t you get it you heartless fucker?!” John was tearing into Sherlock’s neck, biting and sucking. “Normal is all we can hope for!”_

_Sherlock was laying there, laughter spilling out black and thick from his toothless smile._

_“Precious mosquito. How can I truly be angry with you? ” Sherlock was singing, every note igniting another poppy in flame. “All you want is to be part of me.”_

_And then Sherlock was on top of John, blood slick with sweat and ash on naked skin._

_“My little mosquito.” Tender fingers sank through John’s cheeks to stroke his teeth. “There is no going back.”_

_And John was screaming, screaming as Sherlock consumed him, tooth by tooth._

_~~~~_

            John wrenched awake pinned on his stomach, hands twisted behind his back in a harsh grip.

 

            He choked out a sob. He could smell the sweat; feel the heat of the body on top of him, crushing him in a tangled mass of fear and anticipation.

 

            He was utterly frightened and shamefully hard. He felt his attacker rub a single warm hand against his bare back, drifting down his spin in a rush of nerves and violation. He wanted to arch up into it, moan in surrender before he tore apart his attacker. He needed to kill it, rip it into something helpless and inert.

 

            He couldn’t breathe. Oxygen was a solid thing and he couldn’t choke it down.

 

            “John.”

 

            And he was hissing at that low baritone. There were lips whispering against his ear, a soothing voice that belied the danger he was in.

 

            He would route it out and tear it to shreds.

 

            “John just breath.”

 

            Stars burst behind his eyes and blackness came rushing in. The feeling of skin on skin burned. He couldn’t feel his legs. He wondered distantly if they had been amputated.

 

            And Sherlock was suddenly there and flipping him over, hands gripping John’s face.

 

            “Breath John. Inhale.” Their foreheads were pressed together and John could taste his breath. “You aren’t dying. You aren’t dying. You are living. Growing. Rebirth.”

 

            Sherlock was murmuring against his skin, his voice throbbing in time with the ringing in John’s ears.

 

            “Prophase, prometaphase, metaphase, anaphase and telophase…”

 

            It was like a nursery rhyme. John felt Sherlock’s hands move down against his chest, tapping and stroking tentatively. And the detective was humming, his voice small and childish.

 

            “mitosis and karyokinesis and cytokinesis…”

 

            “Mitosis?” The words felt sticky on John’s tongue.

 

            “Cytokinesis.” Sherlock was murmuring in agreement, fingers moving back up to curl in his hair.

 

            “I didn’t die?” The word came out a strangled sob. “I won’t _die_.”

 

            “No.” Sherlock was still humming. “You divide. Cytokinesis and then you are more.”

 

            And John was picturing med school and eukaryotic cells dividing into perfectly identical diploid cells.

 

            “Daughters and sons…” John breathed out in awe.

 

            “Erythrocytes. Red blood cells have a life span of four months.” Sherlock’s humming buzzed along his skin. Hands skimming up and down his arms, fingers tracing John’s veins in feather light touches. “Your blood has been reborn over one hundred and eleven time.”

 

            John pictured bleeding in a poppy field. Pieces of him scattered millions of miles away like pollen seeds. The image had morphed into something lulling.

 

            Bits of him spread like spores, failing to germinate in a place that wasn’t home.

 

            Sherlock’s words had been…comforting.

 

            “corpuscles, haematids, erythrocytes…”

 

            Sherlock was still humming, fingers now tracing the scar on his left shoulder in lazy star bursts. John was suddenly overwhelmed by the intimacy of the situation. The burning implications of what _could be_.

 

            He shifted onto his left side, burying his shoulder in the pillow and forcing Sherlock to slowly roll off of him onto his own back. The detective never stopped humming, his eyes closed, fingers now steepled beneath his chin as if he were praying.

 

_Please God, let me live._

            “Are the fish still alive?” John suddenly needed to know very badly. They had to be alright.

 

            “Yes.”

 

            John’s tongue felt swollen, his throat constricted. If he had gone to the store instead then Sarah…

 

            “Are they,” John paused, unsure if fish could suffer. “How did you fix everything?”

 

            Sherlock rolled over towards him, raising one skeptical eyebrow.

 

            “This isn’t about the fish.” Sherlock leaned closer, trying to read his face in the dark. “You were incredibly attracted to Sarah. You had high hopes for the relationship, but you didn’t love her. She’s ended it with you before.”

 

            Sherlock cocked his head, intrigued by the novelty of his new puzzle. “What made this time any different?”

 

            John glanced at Sherlock’s outline. The fact his flat-mate was in his bed. The way he had been comforted from his anxiety attack.

 

            Suddenly Sarah’s suspicions seemed far too close.

 

            “It was about you.” John could barely speak.

 

            “Obviously.” Sherlock snorted. “It always is. But she should know how it is. She’s seen us work together first hand. She had clearly gotten over your time commitments or she wouldn’t have taken you back.”

 

            John stared at him in the dark and wondered not for the first time if Sherlock _understood_. He seemed so childlike and fragile in the dark, his curls framing his face like some ridiculous cherub.

 

            His touch before had seemed almost… _naive._

            Sarah’s words bit at him.

 

            They lodged somewhere deep where he had been a young man, engaged before deployment with dreams of an early retirement and a nuclear family.

 

            Overseas where he had been alone and changed, where Harry’s high school teasing about awkward hugs, fumbled buttons, and nights out with the boys bloomed into a lonely ache.

 

            Mary had been so soft. Sarah had been so lovely. Something warm and comforting, sweet and fragrant.

 

            It was too dangerous to speak. Those grey hawk eyes would dissect anything he said. He was so close. John could feel his breath against his cheek. When had this _shift_ between them occurred?

 

            John wasn’t ready for Sherlock to analyze what John wasn’t sure he understood. He had to figure this out for himself.

 

            “Can you picture me” John rolled on his back, the word alien in his mouth “married?”

 

            Sherlock huffed.

 

            “If you find the right woman.” The idea seemed unpalatable on his face.

            “I’m pretty sure that’s the point of marriage, Sherlock.” John snorted. “Finally finding the right one.”

            “You think you want to settle down.” It wasn’t a phrased as a question.

 

            “You don’t see me eventually starting a family?” John stared at the ceiling frowning.

            “I don’t see how your lifestyle could be conducive to starting a family. Unless you partnered with a _very_ specific type of woman.” Sherlock’s words were slow and measured.

 

            “You see me chasing criminals in dark alleys until retirement, huh?” John had meant it as a joke, but it came out more of a question.

 

            “Yes.”

 

            The answer was flat and monotone. John frowned. Of course the self-centered git saw John’s life revolving around him indefinitely.

 

            “So what type of woman would that be then?”

 

            “Extremely old fashioned. Tends to the house and home. Leaves you to your sphere of-” Sherlock mouthed the words strangely “- _work_. Someone who will be supportive, but not hope to understand or intrude upon your obligations.”

 

            “Sounds like a housekeeper.” John blanched at the idea of something so patronizing. “You’re basically suggesting I get a younger version of Mrs. Hudson?”

 

            “Don’t be so dense, John.” Sherlock gave an exasperated sigh. “You just need the type of patriarchy loving woman who lives a separate sphere of homemaker– who loves you but is ultimately oblivious and uninvolved.”

 

            “That is the most misogynistic thing I have ever heard come out of your mouth Sherlock.”

 

            “Don’t be daft, misogyny has nothing to do with it. I am merely describing what your requirements for a successful long-term relationship with a woman require – what you _need.”_

            Sherlock fidgeted with agitation, his face twisting into something sour.

 

            “A more progressive relationship demands an equal partnership and that can’t work because _I’m_ _your **partner**_.”

 

            The word hung in the air.

 

            John’s ribs seemed to crack against the pressure it took to breathe. Sherlock was so bloody selfish.

 

            Sarah wasn’t being paranoid. He was a sodding idiot. He was throwing relationship after relationship away for adrenaline highs and codependence with a narcissist.

 

            After everything John had given, how could Sherlock still expect more?

 

            What was _more_ with Sherlock?

 

            “I don’t want the two to be mutually exclusive.” John was hissing. Hissing and spiting something desperate. Because if he didn’t claim this, didn’t hoard this piece of autonomy…

 

            “With your criteria they are.”

 

            “What if I’m not the problem? Did it ever occur to you that maybe _you_ need to change your criteria of partnership?!”

 

            “Why?” Sherlock frowned and shrugged. “I have no such difficulties balancing things. For me it has always just been us.”

 

            “I thought it was solely about the work.”

 

            “It is. And _you are part of my work_.”

 

            Oh.

 

            The words seemed to deceptively simple. Sherlock couldn’t mean…

 

            This was too much. He had to deflect and disengage and in the morning there would be order and shopping and cases. Everything had to go back.

 

            “Yeah, I’ve noticed you don’t share.”

 

            Sarcasm. Barbs were safe.

 

            “Don’t be petty. This is not an issue of sharing, John. There isn’t room for both.”

 

            Christ he couldn’t do this. He couldn’t keep engaging. He was shutting down.

 

            “I don’t believe that. I _can’t_ believe that Sherlock.”

 

            Done. Get out. Leave it lie. Everything will be ordered in the morning.

 

            “ _Nemo potest duobus dominis servire.”_ Sherlock’s voice was almost too soft to hear.

 

            John shuddered, feeling the hairs on the back of his neck prickle in fear. The Latin rang out in the black like a divination.

 

            He fought against the irrational urge to roll away, against the fear that something was being consummated and sealed against his will.

 

            “ _aut enim unum odio habebit et alterum diliget aut unum sustinebit et alterum contemnet non potestis.”_

 

            John grit his teeth. He was sick of this. Sick of fumbling around the edges of things he could never seem to grasp.

 

            “Was that a curse?” His tone was sharp and hostile.

 

            “Hardly.” Sherlock’s voice rumbled in amusement. “Scripture: Mathew 6:24. Figured you might invest more in the words of a higher authority.”

 

            “It might have been more effective if I understood Latin.” John frowned at a sudden thought. “Are you Catholic?”

 

            “Don’t be stupid. The only higher power I believe in is my own. The Bible merely sounds coarse in English.” Sherlock rested a hand on John’s sheet. “Are you going to take a Secobarbital?”

 

            John glanced at the clock and grimaced. 3:40 am.

 

            “No. I’ve got to get up for work in 3 hours.”

 

            Sherlock nodded “I’ll stay here then.”

 

            John stiffened, a million responses and possibilities screaming through his head.

 

            Sherlock merely clasped his hands under his chin and hummed, rolling onto his back and resuming his thinking pose.

 

            John turned over, the words ‘Leave, I’ll be fine’ lodged stiffly in his throat.

 

            He could feel Sherlock’s body heat against his back, warm and comforting.

 

            When had his life gotten so complicated?

 

~~~


	7. A Case of Mitosis

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John stood there, on the threshold of something palpable and raw. Sherlock laid there, fingers poised in thought as if he would rip the answers from the very threads of the universe.
> 
> He looked up, grey eyes scanning as John felt every stark detail stripped from him with each breath. The intimacy of the invasion burned and John felt the question hang between them. The secret cleaved from his flesh and silence.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi all. Here is your weekly update, I hope you enjoy! 
> 
> I might not be able to get next week's chapter out in time on Thursday just because there are some major plot points that have to tie together with the end of the story I am working on. I will try to have it out by Sat but just keep in mind there might be some delays. 
> 
> As always leave your thoughts below! I love reading them! <3

**Chapter 7**

 

 

We were all basically alone  
Despite what all his studies had shown  
That what's mistaken for closeness  
Is just a case of mitosis  
\- Andrew Bird "Imitosis"

 

 

            When Sherlock was eight he saw his first homeless man during a trip to London. He had escaped from his governess only to spend the afternoon in the alley with an old alcoholic. Mycroft (of course) had finally found him dirty and enthralled, insisting that they take the man home with them.

 

            He only kept the memory because it was Mycroft’s favorite snide story: Sherlock and his desire to be a junkie gutter rat at age eight.

 

            Sherlock of course admittedly refused to delete any information that would cripple him in his verbal spars with his brother. Hard drive space be damned.

 

            He had however, deleted the worthless sentiment that accompanied the snapshot memory.

 

            Worthless sentiment that came welling up as he traced John’s scar before dawn.

 

            The scar tissue was white and raised, splayed beneath the collarbone like splattered paint, winding into the tight pucker of a logarithmic spiral. Sherlock rested eye level with it, tracing his fingers over ridges and mountains that jutted up from smooth skin. The Andes of epidermises! The Himalayans of bullet holes! Trust brilliant John to be a mathematical natural phenomenon.

 

            Maybe sentiment wasn’t so utterly uselessly abhorrent. Maybe it was just annoying.

 

            Just this once.

 

            He taped the Fibonacci sequence as he circled the center, marveling at the bits of shrapnel still embedded in hardened lumps.

 

            When he had first laid eyes on the old man in the alley he finally understood the concept of beauty. That someone could have so much information written in their skin, that there could be so many lines and stories permanently etched in the body through hardship and despair. It was nothing like the pinched (inbred) faces of the wealthy or the generic smiles on the telly.

 

            He had sat with the old man for hours; giddy that something could hold his attention. Enthralled that every angle revealed a new deduction.

 

            He felt it now. That rapt rush of awe and reverence at the fact life still had precious secrets left to discover.

 

            Because he had lived with this man for four hundred and thirty eight days and never seen _this._

 

            John had been hiding so much. Reprehensible! And he would probably hide it again the moment he was awake, all pink and sputtering with _modesty_ and all that abysmal nonsense. Such a waste.

 

            If Sherlock mapped the proper trajectory he could arrange to be shot in the same manner and have his own shoulder scar to map. Would they be the same? He could measure the similarities on how their bodies healed, how they knitted together in perfect spirals of flesh and nerves.

 

            Would John find that weird?

 

            Probably.

 

            Best not to tell him.

 

            Because it was a truly irresistible thought. Etched in the planes of his skin were such lovely-

            John’s mobile beeped and Sherlock stilled.

 

            His pulse hammered in his ears and he felt flush with indignation that he should have to care about something as trivial as modesty. Because he didn’t care. Meaningless social construct! But John clung to such ridiculous notions like a garish life raft. And if he woke up to Sherlock’s touch he would ignore what was _clearly_ scientific explor –

 

            John’s mobile went off again.

 

            Sherlock snarled and retrieved the nasty thing from the bedside, switching off the volume with a vicious jab just as it gave a third chime.

 

            “Swh-time?” John cracked a bleary red eye before shifting to lie flat on his belly, his head buried in the pillow.

 

            Sherlock felt sudden heat pool low in his stomach. The back of the scar was now bared in alluring pale white lines. Scandalous! Indecent!

 

            Oh, John was such a _tease_.

 

            “5:13 am. You received a text from that vexatious sick ward you call work perkily announcing your morning shift has been covered.” Sherlock whispered, trying to keep his voice from sounding predatory. _yesyesyesyes_ \- “Hardly professional. Go back to sleep.”

 

            0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89, 144…

 

_Yes!_

 

            He was at 99194853094755497 in the Fibonacci sequence. John’s breathing had finally lapsed back into deep sleep.

 

            Sherlock’s hand was already reaching out, trembling with anticipation.

 

~~~

 

            John, being the military creature of habit and all things predictably dull, awoke at 6 am on the dot.

 

            Unfortunate, really, as Sherlock was currently hovering over John’s back on all fours while prodding the scar with fascinated fingers. And he had been so careful these past twenty minutes to avoid touching the twitchy sleeper’s body with his legs too! All those wretched muscle cramps for nothing. Maybe if he stayed still John would fade back into sleep. He was tired and….

 

            John reared up and collided with Sherlock. He tried to buck the man off in a panic before twisting over onto his own back and proceeding to freaking out.

 

            Lovely. John was now fully awake and going through _another_ sexual identity crisis.

 

            Dull.

 

            Sherlock merely tightened his legs, lunging forward to straddle John’s lap before resuming his prodding from the front unperturbed.

 

            John blinked, turned bright red, and then exploded.

 

            “WHAT THE BLOODY HELL ARE YOU-“

 

            “Busy.”

 

            “I CAN BLOODY WELL SEE THAT! GET OFF OF-”

 

            “-do stop squirming-”

 

            “-ME BEFORE I FLIP YOU OVER AND BREAK-“

 

            “Honestly John I don’t have time for your sexual identity crisis.”

           

            “EVERY FUCKING BONE IN YOUR BODY FOR TRYING TO EXPERIMENT ON ME IN MY-”

 

            “I wasn’t experimenting on you.” Sherlock frowned and pinned john’s hands beneath him. He didn’t have time for this. “Look around. No medical equipment or syringes like last time.”

 

            The statement failed to produce a calming effect. Noted.

 

            “HOW COULD I BLOODY FORGET?!”

 

            John’s face was quite purple now, like an eggplant. Gross. Perhaps Sherlock shouldn’t have brought that up. Honestly, it had been months ago and he had only needed a blood sample.

 

            John was such a drama queen.

 

            “-THEN WHAT THE HELL WERE YOU-Oh God were you _caressing_ me?!”

 

            Honestly. John really should have taken that Secobarbital.

 

            Sherlock wondered if it was too late to convince him. Probably.

 

            “Don’t be daft. I was examining your shoulder wound. Now calm down.”

 

            John’s nostril flared as his voice ground out, impossibly low and angry.

 

            “ **Get. Off. Now.** ”

 

            Sherlock frowned and slowly began to move off John’s lap. John was all wound up and was clearly going to get out of bed and pull on a shirt the moment he could, covering the lovely scar for who knows how many dreadful days.

 

            Possibly forever after this hissy fit.

 

            Unacceptable.

 

            The morning light was so much better for examination now.

 

            “John wait.” Sherlock grabbed the doctor’s shoulders before he could sit up and leave. “You never told me how you got this scar.”

 

            “By being shot!” John was leaning away, yelling and twisting the duvet in his lap in an awkward lump. Sherlock rolled his eyes.

 

            As if he hadn’t already felt _that_ when he had straddled John.

 

            “No, the story behind it.”

 

            “That’s because it’s _private_!!!” John was bright red and shaking with anger.

 

_Privacy?_

_John?_

 

            Sherlock rolled his eyes again.

 

            The delusions of the simple minded never ceased to amaze him.

 

            But John was moving to get up and that was simply unacceptable. John of all people should know you don’t interrupt the middle of a medical examination.

 

            God knows he always yelled whenever Sherlock did it.

 

            “I want to know.”

 

            “You have no right! What did I tell you? Christ just LET GO!!!”

 

            “Wait.”

 

            Sherlock paused, mind racing. The bedroom was slowly filling with light, the scar lighting up with dozens of new unobserved details in the morning sun.

 

            “I have to know…I need to understand the cause of your trauma. The nightmares.”

 

            Bald faced lie. Hopefully sentimental enough to appeal to John.

 

            “No you don’t.” John was grinding his teeth, fury rapidly fading into frustration in the face of Sherlock’s apparent concern. Always one for sentiment. “War is shit. Everything else is just detail.”

 

            “I need the details. I need to understand everything.”

 

            John pinched his nose between his fingers, supremely irritated but apparently just a little bit touched.

 

            “This is too far, even for you Sherlock.” John was attempting to move again. “Just because I let you stay here last night after…you can’t just…this is _personal_ Sherlock. You can’t use this as an opportunity to-”

 

            Sherlock put on his best look of concern.

 

            “I didn’t know you had been shot by someone you knew.”

 

            John froze. Sherlock tried to move an excited hand back to the shoulder in what he hoped seemed like a soothing manner.

 

            Lovely, precious little scar!

 

            Distraction and re-triggered trauma and John had forgotten how to move. He was so transparent.

 

            "How-?” John’s voice was distant and soft.

 

            “The wound is point blank, no angle, at a very close range…”

 

            John was now completely stiff, letting Sherlock push his shoulder back into the mattress.

 

            How ordinary people got anything done without manipulation was unfathomable to him!

 

            “If you had been ambushed the shot would not be perfectly horizontal. You were holding completely still. Your survival instinct is unparalleled. If the enemy held a gun on you, even in a hostage situation, you would have attempted to dodge the bullet or at least twisted properly to maximize the likelihood of ensuring a graze.”

 

            John was staring at the ceiling now, completely oblivious. Sherlock resumed his earlier prodding at the scar.

 

            “The bullet was guarantied to hit at such close range. And the gunman was experienced because the shot was steady. Inches lower and it would have hit your heart, instant kill shot. Yet he aimed higher. So the gunman had intended to kill you, but couldn’t.”

 

            A small gurgled sound escaped John’s lips. Sherlock frowned at the pained expression and switched his prodding to a gentle rub.

 

            Leave it to John to demand coddling when Sherlock was already being so accommodating. Annoying. He really should have insisted on that Secobarbital last night.

 

            “Conclusion. Someone you knew pulled a gun on you. Someone you trusted. And in the sheer shock of being betrayed, you didn’t move. But because they knew you, because they had built a relationship with you, they unconsciously aimed too high for your heart.”

 

            Sherlock frowned at the glazed expression on John’s face, his eyes dark and his lips parted. Maybe he should stop. John was clearly upset, but something about his laying there slack mouthed reminded Sherlock of something he couldn’t place. He skin suddenly itched and his stomach twisted with what must surely be hunger.

           

            “Why didn’t he shoot you a second time when he realized the shot was too high? Did you shoot him?”

 

            “No.”

 

            John’s voice was impossibly calm as he turned over, curling on his side away from Sherlock.

 

            “He shot himself.”

 

            Sherlock reached out and grasp John’s good shoulder, rubbing circles with his thumb. His skin was impossibly warm. Sherlock leaned in and hesitated.

 

            It felt too bright and real to hold John in the morning, to spoon against his back. Sherlock was already hot and John would surely be too warm and certainly uncomfortable to embrace.

 

            Not that he would have.

 

            Not that it made any difference. Because he had held John twice now, all flesh and bones and transport really. If John’s Banshee shrieking hadn’t interrupted his thinking each time he never would have even bothered, really. The morning light was no different. The fact he could see him didn’t make this _different_.

 

             He was merely tired of all this sentimental comforting business. It was boring. Obviously.

 

            “Sherlock”

 

            John’s voice was hoarse, rattling like a marble down a drain.

 

            “That…these things…I can’t…”

 

            The front door suddenly slammed opened with a crack and a prim tread started quickly up the stairs.

 

 _Mycroft_.

 

            Sherlock snarled and snatched his dressing gown from the floor before thundering down the stairs.

 

            How _dare_ he come now!

 

            How dare he interrupt…Sherlock snarled for words.

 

            The white spider lines of John’s scar were impossibly naked in his mind, the sudden discovery vulnerable and soft and _private_ because…just because!

 

            Scientific exploration.

 

            Mycroft was interrupting scientific exploration. Science was sacred. His brother was never welcome. The sudden explosion of rage, the sickening feeling of _violation_ as his fat odious repellant brother stood in his living room like an overstuffed toad was _natural._ He was thwarting genius.

 

            “Been having fun with John I see.” Mycroft’s voice dripped with the smug bourgeoisie condescension that inspired revolutionaries to murder.

 

            Oh, if only!

 

            Sherlock saw red, wanted to snap his neck and use his vertebra as Christmas decorations. Wanted to gouge out his eyes for smiling, for glancing at the staircase as _if_ Sherlock would even consider debasing himself in such _weakness_.

 

            Sherlock’s voice was ice as he marched to his bookcase for a suitable task to ignore Mycroft with. He wouldn’t give him to satisfaction of rage. “Sorry brother, Mrs. Hudson hasn’t brought up any _biscuits_ today.”

 

            “A Bible?” Mycroft arched an eyebrow at the book in Sherlock’s hands. “Now I know something is up. Has the champion of rationality and celibacy truly fallen so low?”

 

            “Serial killers love quoting divine or satanic instruction.” Sherlock bookmarked a page and placed it on the coffee table. “It’s a research resource for cases.”

 

            “Of course.” Mycroft tilted his head to the door. “John I can hear you out there spying on the stairs, you might as well come in and read the bible with us. May I suggest 1st Peter 2:11, Sherlock?”

 

            John opened the door with a crack, his face red and his knuckles white as he gripped his gun. He looked ready to shoot Mycroft.

 

            It was heartwarming.

 

            “I’m surprised you can listen without bursting into flames.” John was snarling.  Sherlock felt giddy.

 

            “Your _entanglements_ with my brother are clearly a detriment to your manners.” Mycroft pursed his lips in disapproval. “A gun?”

 

            “It’s 6 am. What do you want Mycroft?”

 

            The room was dusty and smelled dirty, and John suddenly looked impossibly important wrapped in a ratty terry cloth robe, shoulders thrown back in tight defiance. Something ugly bubbled deep in Sherlock’s stomach. This was his _home_ and Mycroft should never be here to see the shafts of light and sleepy skin in the early morning. It was _his._

 

            “You have made several unusual purchases of a chemical nature.” Mycroft took a step forward and Sherlock moved in front of him, between them. “I merely wanted to verify they are not for…recreational purposes.”

 

            “At 6 am?!”

 

            He was hissing, spitting, as he grabbed his brother’s arm and yanked him towards the bedroom, the black rage at bringing him into _his_ room overrode by the irrational violation, the desperate itch that he had to get Mycroft away from John and the living room of dust motes and mussed blonde hair.

 

            “Here is your _evidence._ ”

 

            Now that he was in front of the tank the feeling was worse. His skin prickled and burned. Nausea was a living thing writhing like a parasite in his belly, long and hungry.

 

            Mycroft frowned, then smiled in _that_ way that was oily and spoilt, like frying grease, congealing between his teeth and in the sheen of his beady black eyes.

 

            “Oh brother dear.” His words were hissing, popping out of the oil in hot sparks. “The ocean, skulls and bubbling treasure chests. I had thought you had left your _pirating_ days behind with other sentimental memories.”

 

            The word pirate stretched and snapped against Sherlock’s skull, impossibly tight and hot against the wave of chattering blackness, harsh and stringent behind his eyes and on his lips.

 

            Mycroft tilted his head like a bird, considering, beak sharp and curving in that knowing _hateful_ smile.

 

            John was in the room now, fists trembling as he argued with Mycroft. He was refusing a manila folder.

 

            Sherlock couldn’t hear them, couldn’t hear anything above a pounding sound… a pounding scrapping sound against metal in his head.

 

            “Get out.” Something strange was coming. Any moment it was coming and Mycroft had to leave.

 

            “You have to take this case. I wouldn’t have come before my flight and interrupted your morning _bliss_ if this were not a national emergency.”

 

            “I will do no such thing. Lestrade already has us on an important case.” Blatant lie. “Now **leave**!”

 

            “This is an interesting one Sherlock. I would think you would jump at the opportunity considering you’ve been bored enough to build a fish tank.”

 

            Something flickered under Mycroft’s oily surface; a micro-expression reveled in the subtle tensing above his right eyebrow.

 

            Things _had_ been slow.

 

            Suspiciously slow.

 

            “I’ll look at it after I’m finished with everything else.”

 

            He snatched the folder from his brother’s pudgy fingers, ignoring the look of victory blooming across his brother’s fat face as he showed himself out.

 

_I would think you would jump at the opportunity…_

            Sherlock ignored the way John was moving angrily through the kitchen, slamming cupboards and swearing blackly. He flipped through the folder.

 

            The case was perfect. Weird. Impossible. Unique.

 

_Too good._

 

            “John get dressed.” Sherlock’s voice was snapping. Snapping like the pounding cry he still heard in his head, bright and rhythmic, breaking cartilage and bone.

 

            “We are taking it?” John flushed with anticipation, hungry at the prospect of action and violence.

 

            “No.” Sherlock rushed to turn away from John. To hide whatever alien was pounding in his head. “The case is a distraction orchestrated to keep us busy. We are going to Scotland Yard to see what from.”

 

            “Sherlock?”

 

            John’s voice was warm and _hateful_ and Sherlock would surely vomit if he ever left him, ever disappeared into black with the smell of wet earth and loneliness.

 

            “Shut up!” And he was yelling at John now, yelling because that was ridiculous and he didn’t care and John was patently annoying and he wished fervently that he would just _stop talking…_

            Because there it was.

 

            Wet and cold.

 

            Grating against his mind like a stone in his shoe.

 

            He was six, wild and unruly, stuck at his Aunt’s estate and desperate to find some hidden treasure. Mycroft had left with Mummy for a luncheon on the lawn with members of parliament and he was imprisoned here with dull tutors and hateful dogs. He would be like Blackbeard and command his own ship and sail away from this hateful estate with its voiceless maids and broken promises.

 

            He had found it late afternoon, a secret cave stuffed with ship sails and the promise of hidden treasure and escape from the governess. He had crawled into its metal mouth only to slip and crash down freezing tunnels onto concrete with a sickening crunch. His leg was warm but his bladder had held, and in the dark he knew he must be bleeding.

 

            Bleeding in the blackness.

 

            Alone.

 

            He had taken off his shoes and beat the pipes, crying and clanging against metal and the copper smell of his own blood. When no one came he was trying to climb back up, fingernails clinging and ripping against the metal shutes and rivets until he fell down again, landing back on his leg with a wet twisting snap. And he was happy for the pain because it brought bright bursts of light behind his eyes and it was oh so dark.

           

            And Sherlock knew, without a doubt, he had fallen into his own grave

           

            He wrapped himself in sailcloth, twisting it tightly around his leg so the spots of light would flash before his eyes like lightning bugs. And he banged and banged, pulling the sheet tighter in agony whenever sleep tickled his senses with gentle fingers. He would wrap himself up in a toga like Caesar, the red of his blood coloring the streak of a patrician consul. They would find him and weep that a descendent of Aeneas had meet such a lowly fate in a pirate cave bereft of treasure.

           

            He woke up in a hospital bed, Mycroft curled around him and snarling at the nurses. They had found him in the laundry chute they said. Compound fracture and severe blood loss they said. His clever sheet tourniquet had saved him they cooed. Lucky to be alive they said. And Mycroft was kissing his head and promising that this time, _this time_ , he wouldn’t leave him.

 

            Next month he was back upstairs in a cast: alone in the drawing room as Mycroft and mummy lunched with parliament.

           

            And he was dreaming of the vessels he would steal through bitter tears.

 

~~~


	8. Heads All Around

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John stood there, on the threshold of something palpable and raw. Sherlock laid there, fingers poised in thought as if he would rip the answers from the very threads of the universe.
> 
> He looked up, grey eyes scanning as John felt every stark detail stripped from him with each breath. The intimacy of the invasion burned and John felt the question hang between them. The secret cleaved from his flesh and silence.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi Everyone! 
> 
> I know it's been forever since I updated, I promise I'm not dead and this story isn't abandoned. Truth be told, my father was diagnosed with terminal liver cancer right when I started posting - I have been battling really severe depression ever since. Writing is hard enough, and depression makes it a million times harder. Most days I don’t feel like what I produce is good enough and I am really struggling with my muse. This is where the mystery part of the fic starts, and boy writing action and intrigue doesn't come naturally to me.
> 
> Yesterday I found a wonderful anonymous message on my tumblr from a reader urging me to keep posting. I honestly cannot tell you how much this meant to me, to hear an encouraging voice when I have been so down on myself.
> 
> Thank you kind anon – here is the next chapter. It may not be perfect, but if I wait until the story is ‘perfect’ I might never put it online. Please forgive my mistakes and I hope you enjoy.
> 
> As always I would like to thank my Beta reader Ali – without your insightful comments and constructive criticism this fic never would have seen the light of day. Seriously you are the best and have been a constant source of support and great ideas.
> 
> Finally I can’t guarantee my update schedule (I am going to try and update at least once a month for now on), but if I disappear again you can always contact me at http://lovelylaceandlilac.tumblr.com/ - I am completely open to questions and your support helps more than you can ever know. You never know when a kind word can help someone in a dark place.

**Chapter 8**

_You'd kill yourself for recognition_ __  
Kill yourself to never, ever stop  
You broke another mirror  
You're turning into something you are not  
  


_Radiohead ~ High and Dry_

 

            John had not been himself lately. Baskerville had made him angsty and adrift as his thoughts circled and throbbed.

 

            That wasn’t him.

 

            It was all too muddled, with the dreams, with Sherlock sleeping with him, with Sarah’s break up. And then Mycroft had barged in and Sherlock had…

 

            John glanced over at the man, tense and unnaturally pale in the cab beside him.

 

            John’s spine straightened, and sudden resolve flushed through his body warm and heady. They would have a case soon, a purpose. He didn’t need to understand. When had he ever understood any of what was going on? His life was simply weird. Full Stop.

 

            He had always been rotten at fixing himself.

 

            But was good at fixing others.

 

            Baskerville had royally fucked with them and Sherlock was getting progressively weirder. And he had been too busy internally whining to suck it up and help things get back to normal.

 

            What they needed was work.

 

            Not John obsessing over personal space and appropriate behavior from a man who was blatantly asexual and the opposite of normal.

 

            Work.

 

            He could do that.

 

            “I still don’t understand why we are heading to a random warehouse if Scotland Yard doesn’t have a case for us and Lestrade is on vacation.”

 

            “Lestrade’s not on vacation.” Sherlock frowned and tapped out something on his phone. “He’s at the warehouse on a case. One my brother obviously doesn’t want me on.”

 

            “Wait-how can you possibly know that?”

 

            “I’ve planted a tracking device on him.”

 

            “You _what?!”_

 

            John suddenly felt like an accessory to a very important crime. And considering the number of laws he and Sherlock regularly flaunted, this was no small feat.

 

            “You heard me.” Sherlock frowned and gave the driver additional instructions. “It’s in his mobile. A holdover precaution from the days the Yard tried to keep me out of investigations. Its still useful now and again.”

 

            “Sherlock you can’t do that to a police officer!”

 

            John felt sudden relief that Sherlock had put the device in the DI’s phone instead of injecting it in his blood stream.

 

            The very fact the thought had occurred at all should have been disturbing.

 

            “Nonsense. It’s for his own good.”

 

            “Christ I can’t believe-wait” Suddenly, he knew Sherlock far too well. “You don’t have one planted on me do you?!”

 

            “After Moriarty kidnapped you?” Sherlock raised an eyebrow.  “What do you think?”

 

            John grit his teeth, suddenly feeling like a stray that had been chipped at the pound.

 

            “In my phone, _right_?”

 

            “One of them.”

 

            “ ** _Sherlock_** …”

 

            He would not murder his flat mate on the _way_ to a crime scene.

 

            “Oh don’t throw a hissy fit. We’re here.”

 

            The building was a condemned crumbling warehouse, a red brick remnant of a 19th century meat packing plant with boarded up windows, weeds, and graffiti to match. The inside of the building might as well have been a petri dish for tetanus and God knows what. Piles of trash – beer cans, rusty nails, spray cans, discarded needles, broken glass – littered rotting rooms. He was clearly going to have to watch what Sherlock touched and- oh God was that asbestos?

 

            Lestrade and a small team crouched around police tape in the center of the plant’s packing floor next to two pieces of rusted machinery that surely belonged in a terminator movie. Sherlock strode in like a debutant at a ball, reeking of impatience and self-importance.

 

            John would have appeared similarly intimidating, if not for the used condom stuck to the bottom his boot.

 

            Sherlock’s Italian shoes _would_ be trash repellent.

 

            “Lestrade.”

 

            “Now how the bloody hell did you-“

 

            “You should know better than to listen to my brother.”

 

            Sherlock waved a dismissive hand and crouched over the severed head in the middle of the circle.

 

            “Like you lot ever had a chance of finding any evidence amidst all this trash. Unbelievable. John,” Sherlock crooked an imperial finger. “Analysis.”

 

            That was his cue.

 

            And if John felt a rush of giddiness at the prospect of examining a decapitated head he didn’t show it.

 

            Sherlock could have the complete monopoly on displaying inappropriate reactions, thank you very much.

 

            “His eyes…”

 

            John frowned. The head was covered in a thick layer of grime and dust. The face was mutilated beyond recognition. Not atypical. But his eyes had been…scrambled was the best word for it. Like someone had inserted an epidermal needle in each one and proceeded to whisk the brain to pudding.

 

            “No blood coagulation. The decapitation and facial mutilations were done post mortem. The eyes were done while the victim was still alive.” John ran careful gloved fingers along the clean incisions. “Without seeing the rest of the body I would venture to say that’s what killed him. Torture?”

 

            “Hopefully.” Sherlock looked up from examining the surrounding area and grinned like a kid at Christmas. “More interesting.”

 

            Christmas if Santa were Freddy Kruger and the naughty list had grave repercussions.

 

            Right. No more Halloween movie nights with Sherlock.

 

 

            “The body is nowhere to be found.” Anderson’s nasally voice cut in. “He was murdered somewhere else. The head was left here as a message.”

 

            John stared at the tattoo behind the man’s ear. There was something similar carved behind the other ear. If he didn’t know better…

 

            “We think it is gang related violence. He looks middle eastern.” Lestrade gave a pointed look at John. “We are trying to discern his nationality.”

 

            “Yes. Because thanks to Afghanistan John automatically recognizes the identity of every dead brown guy.” Sherlock rolled his eyes.

 

            “The tattoo looks like Arabic. The carving on the other side though,” John frowned and peeled off his gloves “I don’t recognize the lettering.”

 

            Sherlock swept forward in a show of melodrama before rattling off his deductions.

            John was always tempted to give the detective a prop – a skull or a medieval goblet – he looked so much like a Shakespearian player launching into a grand monologue.

 

            “-killers obviously professionally trained and well acclimatized to violence. More than one to hold him down during the deed and transport the body. And look at the dirt and dust!”

 

            Sherlock spread his arms in a wide arch and spun around the room, coat flaring dramatically. Pompous git.

 

            Definitely Hamlet.

 

            “There isn’t a single footprint. A _single_ foot print in a factory full of dirt and trash. Look at the pattern of debris. Really look!” Sherlock ran towards the surrounding machinery outlined by piles of trash and dirt. “Every bit of grim is piled up against the machines, the floor is clear, but the head is _filthy_!”

 

            Sherlock was off on what was clearly going to be a long speech and John was sleep deprived and hadn’t had his morning cuppa.

 

            Best to nip it in the bud.

 

            “So a bunch of ghosts decapitated the bloke before rolling his head around in the dirt and dropping it here?” John rolled his eyes. “You’ve got a theory. Out with it. Unless you want me to email those Baskerville conspiracy theorists and tell them we’ve got a real paranormal one this time.”

 

            Lestrade had the good sense not to laugh and answered his phone instead.

 

            The force had learned rather quickly that teasing Sherlock was a John-specific privilege.

 

            “I blocked their IP addresses on the blog.” Sherlock gave a derisive snort. “The killers obviously dropped him here and used a portable leaf blower to cover their tracks. Hence the dirt on the head and lack of prints. This is drug-gang violence.”

 

            John reflexively tightened his fist. “Drugs?”

 

            “Look at where they are leaving their message.” Sherlock kicked a needle. “This is junkie park. Why else would Mycroft want me away from the case?”

 

            “He did mention _national security_.”

 

            Anything bringing Mycroft round at 6 am seemed urgent enough to John.

 

            “Bah, Queen and country.” Sherlock said Queen as if he were referencing an annoying grandmother. “The real question here is why would the murders bother covering their tracks in the first place?”

 

            Anderson scoffed. “Most _murderers_ are afraid of being traced and caught.”

 

            “No.” John shook his head. “Why sign the body by carving something behind the ear? Why not leave the torso instead of the easiest part of the body to identify? Why not cut off the tattoo?”

 

            Sherlock beamed with approval. “For gangs, notoriety is advertising. They aren’t hiding from the police.”

 

            Sherlock was smiling beside him. John must be coming down with a fever because his skin felt flushed and sweaty.

 

            “There’s been another body.” Lestrade snapped his phone shut and sighed. “There’s no chance of convincing you to go home is there?”

 

            Sherlock gave a predatory smile.

 

            “None.”

 

~~

 

            The second head was in fairly nice apartment across town. It belonged to a middle eastern woman who had once been very striking. Beautiful even, before her eyes had been scrambled into her brains.

 

            Unlike the man, her face hadn’t suffered any other mutilations. Instead her head had been shaved and a wad of money had been stuffed in her mouth like a Christmas pig. Not that she appeared edible. As far as corpses went.

 

            John frowned.

 

            Right.

 

Being flat-mates might not be the best influence for his internal monologues.

 

No wonder his therapist had all but dumped him.

 

            “No tattoo.” Anderson was snapping his gloves off in a smug manner that practically begged verbal redress. “Junkie or a prostitute.”

 

            Sherlock didn’t bother looking up from the drawers he was rifling through.

 

            “Yes Anderson. A Muslim junkie prostitute who lives in a nice apartment with her husband. Brilliant deduction!”

 

            “Muslim?”

 

            “Prayer rug.” John motioned towards the bedroom. “Facing north.”

 

            “Koran on the bookshelf too.” Lestrade had chimed in and now looked to regret it.

 

Sherlock was radiating smugness in record levels.

 

            Lestrade cast Anderson an apologetic glance and checked his phone again. “The lab ran the dental records. The man was from Syria. Immigrated to the UK two years ago. Last name al-Meqdad.”

 

            “This woman’s husband then.” Sargent Donovan came in from the bedroom. “Found both their passports. They were Syrian refugees looking for a better life.”

 

            Lestrade nodded. “Probably in debt to the loan sharks that got them over here on temporary visas and couldn’t pay. Explains the gang warning.”

 

            “Wrong.”

           

            Sherlock was frowning over the head with a look of pure disdain.

 

            “They weren’t killed by loan sharks.”

 

            “Well they weren’t selling drugs Sherlock. The apartment is clean. Why else would a gang target Syrian refugees to send a message?” Lestrade pulled his phone back out. “Yard has just confirmed the warehouse is central turf for a gang dealing in drugs and human trafficking. Sounds clean cut to me.”

 

            John raised an eyebrow and coughed at the unintentional pun. Lestrade ducked his head and pretended to check his phone again.

 

            “She isn’t Syrian.” Sherlock reached out a gloved hand and touched the woman’s lips. “John tell me what you see.”

 

            John leaned back over the head. The woman’s lips were full and perfectly made-up in a red pout. He mimicked Sherlock’s hand, watching the subtle bulge above the cupids bow when he applied pressure to the upper lip.

 

            “She’s had work done.”

 

            John ran his fingers inside the cavity of her nose feeling the nub of scar tissue. There was another nub behind each ear, and a small crease beneath her jaw and chin.

 

            “Lip augmentation, rhinoplasty, ear tuck and a chin implant by the looks of the scars. Good work though. It’s very subtle, I completely missed it the first time.”

 

            Sherlock’s mouth kicked up in an approving private twitch before turning to scoff at the others. “A Syrian doctor didn’t do this.”

 

             Anderson snorted. “That doesn’t prove anything. She could have had it done here.”

 

            “The scars are too old.” John shook his head. “She probably got this done in Europe ages ago though. I fail to see the connection.”

 

            Sherlock rolled his eyes as if their stupidity was too much to bear. “She has synthetic lip implants. EU doctors prefer collagen injections, especially if she went to the best, which she clearly did. She also has tattooed eyeliner, popular in Beirut.”

 

            Sherlock gave John an expectant look. Right.

 

            John braced himself and shrugged. Because honestly, who could follow Sherlock?

 

            “She got all this done in Lebanon!” Sherlock was beyond agitated. “The country next to Syria! The plastic surgery capital of the world! She is clearly Lebanese and he is too!”

 

            “Ah.”

 

            Best not to give Sherlock any ammo with a response.

 

            “You think they are Lebanese despite having Syrian passports because of _plastic surgery_?”

 

            Or Anderson could denigrate Sherlock’s deductions. Because _that_ always made Sherlock easier to deal with.

 

            John suppressed the urge to punch the Anderson. Years of Sherlock helping and they still hadn’t learned to trust his genius deductions. Half of criminal London would probably still be on the streets of it were up to-

 

 _Oh God, he sounded like Sherlock_.

 

            Nope. Bit not good. Not going to thank about it. Christ. Yet _another_ reason to hate Anderson.

 

            John buried his face the sleeve of his arm and groaned. “You obviously know they are Lebanese Sherlock. Out with it before we all go grey.”

 

            “Are you all blind?! Look around! They were wealthy. This is not the apartment of two refugees from a war torn country. Cosmopolitan taste, French _wine_ , trendy wardrobe, modern furniture, pictures of them skiing and at the beach? Look at her beach pictures. Clear implants, revealing bikini…”

 

            Sherlock was pacing around the room and gesturing wildly.

 

            They would be here all bloody afternoon now.

 

            “Look at the books on the shelf. English, French, Arabic, and _Lebanese._ The Syrian upper class learned French and English, but the Baath party fled before the fighting started and have largely gone to France. And the ones in London are certainly better off than this.  They even have books on _Phoenician_ history! And packs of cigarettes! Look at the lines around her lips and the yellow on her teeth! Tar! She smokes tooand has for _years!_ Unheard of for a woman in Syria. Not uncommon in liberal Lebanon. _They are Lebanese!”_

            “ ** _Okay_**!” Lestrade and John shouted in unison. “We get it already!”

 

            “Well it’s hard to tell with you lot.” Sherlock snapped, folding his arms like a petulant child.

 

            John really needed that cuppa right about now.

 

            “But why – in _one_ sentence Sherlock – would they claim to be Syrian refugees? And why would a drug gang care?”

 

            Sherlock wrinkled his nose.

 

            “I don’t know.” The detective muttered. “ _Yet._ ”

 

            John nodded. “So, sounds like some homeless network research is in order than. Lunch and then questioning?”

 

            Sherlock immediately brightened, grinning at John as if he had offered him candy. Or another decapitated head.

 

            Probably the later knowing Sherlock.

 

            “Naturally. We have research to do.”

 

            “ _After_ lunch.”

 

            Sherlock hooded his eyes and gave a considering side glare. John grinned.

 

_Nope. Not going to work._

 

            John raised an expectant eyebrow in challenge. Never come between a man and his stomach.

 

            “Fish and chips to go then.” Sherlock grumbled indignantly.

 

            John pictured running through piss stained alley’s trying to eat greasy chips.

 

            “Sure. Fish and chips and we can talk about what you put in my phone and _other places_.”

 

            John gave his best harmless smile.

 

            “Or if you prefer.” Sherlock ground out the words like a death sentence. “We could also _stop_ somewhere for Chinese.”

 

            Sherlock looked like he had swallowed a lemon.

 

            John laughed amicably. The rest of Scotland Yard looked downright uncomfortable.

 

            “Chinese sounds great.”

 

~~~

 

            John never got Chinese.

 

            Oh sure he got _near_ the Chinese restaurant. Close enough to see the lucky cat in the window; the peeking roasted duck glowing upside down in the red fluorescents. Close enough to salivate and hear his poor neglected stomach grumble in relief. Close enough to imagine finally getting his beloved cuppa.

 

            And then Sherlock - horrible infuriating curious bloody Sherlock - had spied one of his bloody sodding homeless network around the back.

 

            Just a minute he said.

 

Just going to pay for some information he said.

 

            And John - reckless adrenaline junkie John - had been so excited about the prospect of the case and mystery he had said okay.

 

            Which was why John was now hiding behind a dumpster with an _empty_ _stomach_ getting shot at!

 

            Because really, getting shot at wasn’t that bad. Not the best, but not the worst he’s had by far. But an empty stomach and no morning cuppa?

 

            A bloke could only take so much.

 

            “Bloody hell! Who has guns in London?!”

             

            Sherlock crouched grimly beside him, bullets ricocheting overhead.

 

            “Not your average drug ring.”

 

            The cacophony of gunshots died down to a sporadic two. John leaned against Sherlock, his voice barely above a whisper. “Disbanding?”

 

            Sherlock gave a terse nod. “Daylight. Police will be here soon. Act now.”

 

            “Right.”

 

            Sherlock flipped the far lid of the dumpster forward with a loud clang as John rolled out behind the bin on the opposite side.

 

            A sane man would have probably waited for the police instead of rolling towards their assailant.

 

            But then a sane man wouldn’t have caught their only lead in the kneecaps in a crack shot.

 

            Sane was over-rated.

 

            The assailant collapsed with a scream, dropping his gun on the pavement. The revolver butt hit the pavement and fired up and **_fuck_** _!_

And now John was _still hungry_ and covered in brains.

 

“ **JOHN!** Your appalling shooting got him in the head you intolerable imbecile!”

 

            “My shooting?! The _sodding gun_ went of when he dropped it you ungrateful _prat!_ ”

 

            “You should have calculated that in your trajectory and shot him in the _shoulder_ instead!”

 

Sherlock was rushing around the now headless assailant towards the flat they had broken in only ten minutes earlier.

 

            “The shoulder-oh _nice_ I suppose you figure that’s where I naturally want to shoot everyone isn’t it?!”

 

There were skull fragments in the knitting. Great. He had actually really liked this jumper.

 

“Glad to know you’re grateful I saved your pompous egotistical skinny arse!” He followed the detective inside swearing blackly.

 

            Sherlock was standing over the woman in the living room, white hands fisted at his sides.

 

            She had been shot in the back of the head.

 

            _Shit._

Sherlock had been paying his homeless informant behind the Chinese restaurant when the man had informed him that one of the young immigrant junkies had witnessed a body disposal in a meat packing plant while high as a kite. They had tracked the kid down near a methadone clinic. A hundred quid and a convenience store bottle of whiskey later the kid admitted that one of the men he saw dumping the head was the local dealer’s hired muscle.

 

            The dealer lived nearby. They had only planned on shadowing the man. Following him for a little while and then John could have his lunch. Promise.

 

            That all changed when the man entered a flat and they heard a woman scream. John had burst in without thinking, because _no one_ was attacking a woman while _he_ was outside and armed. Only there had been five men inside the tiny flat.

 

            Five men with guns.

           

            “They tried to make this look like a break-in gone wrong.” Sherlock closed his phone, the howl of sirens in the distance. “She was a journalist.”

 

            The flat was ransacked. Drawers ajar and papers scattered everywhere. The television and laptop were gone, her purse’s contents spread across the floor. It certainly looked like a break in.

 

            Except when John had kicked in the back door, grim faced and determined to save whatever damsel was within, he had heard her pleading.

 

            _“I don’t know anything….please…I was just writing about the squatting problem…please.”_

 

            She had been on her knees with a gun against her head, had looked up at the sound of John bursting through the door.

           

            John had shot the man standing behind her and they returned fire, a bullet grazing his jacket as Sherlock yanked him back out the door and into the alley with an angry shout.

 

            She never saw her own bullet coming.

 

            He hadn’t been able to save her.

 

            Shot in the back.

 

            John suddenly felt ill.

 

            He leaned forward, tasting rising bile.

 

            Covered in brains and no food in 36 hours and the sight of the sight of a clean murder compared to two mutilated heads was going to make him hurl like an AE intern.

 

            _Fuck._

           

            He felt Sherlock’s hand on his shoulder, impossibly warm and tight. The detective brow furrowed in a tight frown. He looked intense and…

 

…constipated?

 

            That couldn’t be right.

 

            “Do you-ah-“

 

Sherlock trailed off, his face pinched unnaturally tight. The hand on John’s shoulder squeezed harder.

 

            “-do you need to take a moment and  fix yourself some tea?”

 

            John blinked.

 

 

            Sure.

 

Perfectly normal question.

 

            Asperger’s didn’t even _begin_ to cover this.

 

            “Are you suggesting I fix myself tea in a _murdered_ woman’s house?”

 

            Sherlock frowned.

 

            “Well it certainly won’t do _her_ any good at this point.” Sherlock removed his hand from John in a huff. “It’s not like the murder took place in the kitchen. You’ve been complaining all day.”

 

            John just stared at him.

 

            Sherlock cocked his head and frowned.

 

            “Bit not good?”

 

            “Bit not good? You don’t see a potential moral or legal problem with _tampering with evidence_ just to get a cuppa?!”

 

            John must have fallen in a parallel universe.

 

That or he had been shot and this was the afterlife. Covered in brains and arguing about tea with Sherlock over a murder victim.

 

            “Don’t be intentionally dense. Lestrade is on his way.” Sherlock was red with indignation now. “And anything with half a brain cell knows I would never let you tamper with any form of relevant evidence!”

 

            Sherlock was now sputtering with anger and clearly...

 

            …defensive?

 

            “Sherlock, are you,” the word seemed foreign on John’s tongue “trying to   _comfort_ me?”

 

            “Don’t be obtuse.” The detective stormed off in what could almost be characterized as an insulted sulk. “You’re fainting is merely an inconvenience.”

           

            “Of course.” John rolled his eyes. “God forbid you be forced to talk with Anderson three times in one day.”

 

 

            Perfectly normal _._

             

           

 

 


	9. Crevices of Cerebellum

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John stood there, on the threshold of something palpable and raw. Sherlock laid there, fingers poised in thought as if he would rip the answers from the very threads of the universe.
> 
> He looked up, grey eyes scanning as John felt every stark detail stripped from him with each breath. The intimacy of the invasion burned and John felt the question hang between them. The secret cleaved from his flesh and silence.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you everyone who is still reading this fic. The number of wonderful messages I received on my tumblr was one of the most touching things I have ever experienced, and I would especially like to thank angawawa19671 for leaving one of the most inspiring comments ever. Thank you so much everyone. I really get down on myself with this depression, but your kind words make it easier to push past it and write.
> 
> For this chapter and the next you might have to suspend a little disbelief if you are British. The British service industry may or may not be the best place for white collar individuals to find information on the seedy underbelly of drugs and crime, but in America it most certainly is. I wrote this bit based off my own experience waiting tables for graduate school in the US, and boy was it an eye opener. If it is not that way in Britain I ask your patience for these next two chapters - this is only a pit stop for John and Sherlock getting the information they want. And if you are British and open to Brit picking please please *please* send me a message! I probably desperately need one!
> 
> As always I would like to thank my Beta reader Ali – without your insightful comments and constructive criticism this fic never would have seen the light of day. Seriously you are the best and have been a constant source of support and great ideas.

**Chapter 9**

 

 

 

_And I won’t keep what I can’t catch_

_In my bare hands without a net_

_It’s hard enough to walk on grass_

_So conscious of the consequences_

~ Amanda Palmer ‘Trout Heart Replica’

 

 

 

            It was hard for Sherlock to hate life when he was on a case.

 

            Not that he didn’t try.

 

            This one was marvelous. Perfect really. The living room seemed wonderfully bright, buzzing with electricity and ideas. As of four minutes ago there were only three things in life Sherlock Holmes detested.

 

1.)   Mycroft (obviously)

2.)   Criminal college rehabilitation programs (why couldn’t they rehabilitate the _dumb_ ones?)

3.)   The taste of biro pen caps (they should be flavored, they were really only there to chew on)

 

            Of course the usual list of things Sherlock detested was infinitely longer and included the likes of Anderson and grocery shopping.

 

            But as John would say, cases had a way of simplifying life. (Sherlock knew what John really meant was murders always made everything better, but he let that slide for now).

 

            “Go change John,” Sherlock popped his head up from behind a mountain of books. “You smell like peanuts and basil.”

 

            It was true. The scent of two day old Thai that had seemingly crept into _all_ of John’s jumpers and was somehow both agitating and appealing. Sherlock resisted the urge to walk over and bury his face in the doctor’s current stripped monstrosity. John might find the action off-putting. Maybe if he just stole a jumper instead…

 

            John ignored Sherlock’s command to change, never bothering to look up from his laptop.

 

            “Hmmm. I wouldn’t smell bad if someone would let his colleague stop researching long enough to do laundry and take out the trash.”

 

            “Don’t pout.” Sherlock proceeded to do just that behind his book palisade. “We are on a case. If I can skip meals you can skip laundry.”

 

            “I can’t find anything on the graduate assistant.” John grunted, stretching his hands out and arching his back from the chair. “Honestly Sherlock. You look like you have built your own paperback Fortress of Solitude.”

 

            “That sounds rather nice, actually.” Sherlock tapped two speculative fingers against his chin. “Research the professor instead.”

 

            “A fortress would certainly make your hissy fits easier to bare.” John marched in the kitchen, presumably to fix a cuppa. “That was a superman reference by the way. Fortress of isolation in Antarctica and all that.”

 

            Ridiculous! Sherlock would never build a fortress in the Antarctic. Not enough murders! And John would be intolerably grumpy. The doctor _hated_ the cold.

 

            Because John would have to come along to Sherlock’s fortress of solitude, if he ever decided to build such a thing. Of course. Naturally.

 

            “Pedestrian humor.” Sherlock waved a dismissive hand. “The _professor_ John. Tea can wait.”

 

            “Tea can most certainly _not_ wait.” John leveled a predictable glare. “I’ve got a mind for coffee too. Christ, its 7 am. We’ve been up for _two days_ now!”

 

            “Good thing Sarah gave you sick leave then.” Sherlock marched over to John’s laptop to check the browser history. He had better not been updating his infernal blog!

 

            “Har har.” John put the kettle on and fished a to-go-box out of the crisper. “There is nothing more on the professor Sherlock. I’ve already gone over everything.”

 

            “There has to be _something_!” Sherlock threw his hands up in disgust.

 

            Think!

 

            Five decapitated heads had been found so far. Mr. Al-Meqdad, his wife, Mr. al-Meqdad’s brother, and Mrs. al-Meqdad’s two sisters. The mutilations had matched the first two, the eyes all scrambled out in some sort of symbolic slashing. One of the suspects had been the muscleman of a local drug dealer, who had also been at the murder of a local two bit reporter who was working on a piece concerning the squatting problem in empty London flats after the recession had killed the housing market.

 

            Sherlock had combed the files of Scotland Yard for other unsolved beheadings, but the last year was full of predictable murders (intolerable). John, being such a lovely indispensible source of light, had managed to find five other reporters shot execution style during odd “break-ins” over the past two years. Two reporters were working on an agricultural piece concerning fertilizers and irrigation systems, one was looking into immigration reform, and the other two were investigating the deaths of three graduate students and a professor. The academics had been working on electro-magnetic-pulse generators when their vengeful cocaine and amphetamine dealer had murdered them. A dealer completely unrelated to their current murder suspect.

 

            It would be a headache if it weren’t all so delightfully intricate! Better than any birthday present!

 

            “Bit not good, Sherlock.”

 

            Had he been talking out loud to John?

 

            “Like I said, that’s all morbidly dandy.” John motioned to the steaming mug now sitting next to Sherlock. When had John made him tea? Better question: when was John _not_ making tea? “But what does it all mean?”

 

            Sherlock steepled his fingers together and frowned.

 

            “It means there is a drug ring dabbling in projects they desperately do not want to be linked with. Murders not withstanding.”

 

            “Agriculture? Electrical engineering? Sounds more like a Bond conspiracy than smack dealers.”

 

            John stabbed the basil beef with his chopsticks.

 

            Sherlock gave a contemptuous glare. He was not being condescending, Asian cutlery wasn’t _that_ hard to use.

 

            “Save your movie references for your tiresome blog.” Sherlock flipped his laptop open with an indignant huff. “We need to find out who the student’s dealer was.”

 

            “Shouldn’t we be focusing on the muscle-man’s dealer?”

 

            “He’s a small local fry. Clearly not trusted or he would have been sent to kill that reporter alone. The grad students were flush with grant money, they would have bought pure from someone higher up the food chain.”

 

            John grimaced, the subject clearly distasteful. “They were in a rather prestigious university. Wouldn’t it make more sense to buy from a small fry? Less involvement, safer for white-collar blokes with a lot to lose? The professor especially.”

 

            Something unexpected tickled the back of Sherlock’s throat. He exhaled his words with force, twisting fidgeting fingers into his dressing gown.

 

            “Chemists can be snobs. They don’t buy from two bit fools, rather the suppliers’ who know how it’s made. Small fry’s cut the product purity with questionable substances to stretch profits. The further from the original distributer the more the products been tampered with. These men’s brains are their livelihoods. They aren’t desperate junkies. In their case, going straight to the source is safer. ”

 

            “You speak from personal experience?” John leveled what Sherlock swore was a glare.

 

            “Experience in the criminal underground is _invaluable_ for fieldwork.”

 

            Sherlock fidgeted furiously, suddenly uncomfortable with John’s ire. John was judging him. He could feel it. Ridiculous. His sordid past was actually helpful for once. John should be pleased something useful could come of it!

 

            “We have to find their source.” Sherlock was snapping now. His good mood was suddenly gone.

 

            “Yes, well _you_ are welcome to try. Homeless network has nothing and the Internet is silent.”

 

            “Of course the homeless network is useless. The students had reputations and wanted premium. They didn’t buy off the street -”

 

            Sherlock pushed his tea away. The gesture the mug represented was suddenly making him ill.

 

            “-and this sort of thing isn’t networked online where transactions leave an electronic trail.”

 

            “Well where else did they find their source?”

 

            John wasn’t playing patient anymore. Probably imagining Sherlock hitting up junkies in back alleys.

 

            Sherlock felt nauseous.

 

            “The only reliable place for white-collar individuals to find the best drugs.”

 

            Sherlock hissed the answer out through grit teeth. Infuriating. He didn’t _care_ what John thought

 

            John leveled his _‘its not obvious to me look’._

            Sherlock _despised_ that look.

 

            “Expensive restaurants and valets.” Sherlock practically spat it. Fine then. He began typing furiously into Google.

 

            “Come off it!” John folded his arms, clearly unconvinced. “You don’t order a kilo of drugs with your filet mignon.”

 

            Sherlock didn’t envy John’s ignorance. For a man who had seen the worst humanity had to offer in Afghanistan the doctor could be surprisingly naïve. Or perhaps deliberately optimistic. Either way, the character trait might be enjoyable (redacted: gross sentiment) if he weren’t so judgmental. Right now it was infuriating.

 

            “Servers and valets are rampant cocaine and amphetamine users -”

 

            Sherlock’s voice had he vicious edge. He should try not to enjoy bursting John’s naïve bubble.

 

            Too late.

 

            “- with eight hour or longer shifts on their feet that require attention to detail and forced positivity with few breaks and constant exercise. The service industry lives off the stuff. And waiters and valets in fine dinning who can recommend the best ‘sources’ are tipped handsomely in return.”

 

            “So how do we find the right restaurant? There could be dozens, if not hundreds.” John frowned, as if Sherlock were acting strange. “Is this subject bothering you?”

 

            The doctor wasn’t seething judgment anymore. As if the fact pure cocaine was easily accessible made Sherlock’s past less reprehensible to the prude. Because being a drug addict was morally fine as long as you didn’t put any effort into becoming one. _Right._ Sherlock ignored the last question.

 

            “Getting a PhD is expensive. Student’s who don’t receive university stipends usually work part time in fine dinning. They are appropriately cultured and articulate to suit the job and need flexible hours and a decent salary for the next six years. Restaurants hire in-house, and ones that are more accommodating to publication schedules and receive the best clientele for tips are well known in graduate circles.”

 

            Sherlock suddenly grinned, turning his laptop towards John. “It’s merely a matter of finding the right graduate buzz forum to find the right restaurant.”

 

            “Right. So we have to go in, eat a fancy meal, and ask where we can get some blow?” John suddenly brightened at the prospect of fieldwork that involved eating. Figured the way to forgiveness was through his stomach.

 

            “Hardly. They only disclose this sort of information to their regulars. We don’t have time to build up a reputation.”

 

            “So how are we going to get the information then?”

 

            Sherlock curled his lips in a predatory smile. Payback.

 

            “You are going to apply for a job as a waiter.”

 

            “ ** _WHAT_**?!”

 

~~~

 

            Sherlock tapped impatient fingers against his knee and glared at the fireplace. If looks could incinerate he would have a bonfire going by now. Similar to the one he made with John’s DVD’s last week.

 

            He hadn’t known John could turn that shade of purple, dark and throbbing, almost aubergine. John really should check his blood pressure. He might need medication for that. Maybe Sherlock should bring it up?

 

            John was currently out for his ‘job’ interview. Thanks to Sherlock’s forgery skills and a few fake references he was a guarantied hire. All the other leads were at a dead end. Not the type of ‘dead’ Sherlock normally enjoyed either.

 

            The flat was empty and he was bored.

 

            Intolerably, insufferably, indescribably _bored._

 

            He was shoot the walls, pour acid over the furniture, and set the whole nasty flat on fire bored!

 

            This is how World Wars must have started. Hitler had nothing to do. Of course, the dictator was _bored_! How the artistic mind suffers. Oh but genocide was too indiscriminate and illogical, better to look into sterilizing all the dullards diluting the collective gene pool with all their infernal _breeding_.

 

            Inspiration: mass sterilization according to IQ! That could be a big project, possibly take quite a while and have the bonus of pissing Mycroft off. The result could be a generation of smarter criminals to enjoy in the next two decades (assuming he lived to enjoy it). Less overcrowding in foster homes too. And Lestrade said he couldn’t be charitable. Ha!

 

            But John wouldn’t approve, he seemed like the type to find eugenics impolite.

            

            And perhaps just a touch megalomaniacal.

 

            Figures. See? Nothing to do!

 

            Waiting was the worst.

 

            Waiting and plotting with nothing to do and John wasn’t here to alleviate…

 

            Hold up.

 

            John was _gone_.          

 

            John would be gone _all day_!

 

            He could initiate phase two of his magnificently brilliant mad hatter scheme of genius Because John would throw a hissy fit if he were home to witness such inspiration.

 

            It was unfair, really. Lord Byron kept a bear in his university dorm room, Michelangelo never bathed, and Pythagoras had an unrelenting fear of beans. But of course _Sherlock_ was the _weird_ one!

 

            God forbid plebian society be consistent about their precious standard for ‘normal’ behavior.

 

            Sherlock ran to his bedroom, navy dressing gown bellowing like a cape. All day! It was marvelous! He pulled several boxes from out of his closet and under his bed and set to work.

 

            First he pushed his bed into the corner farthest from the hall door so it was wedged up against his dresser, leaving the wall shared with the bathroom bare. Sherlock then promptly stripped the naked wall of its plaster exposing the bathroom pluming and wooden framing. Sherlock had a 200-gallon tank delivered the previous morning (John had nearly had an aneurysm, good thing he was sleep deprived at the time). The instillation men had placed the tank on the wall with the periodic table, covering the bedroom window and moving the floor lamp in the process.

 

            Sherlock now ran piping from the new tank over the door into the bathroom wall, welding it to the bathroom plumbing. With the flat’s water off (Mrs. Hudson would be yelling about that any moment now) Sherlock wired a generator and a rather massive filtration system inside the wall. The finished product was a cluster of humming boxes, pipes, and wires tangled around the bathroom sink’s original plumbing.

 

            The task took up the rest of the day. Building part of his diabolical scheme had actually been…relaxing.

 

            Maybe even a passible substitute for a massive eugenics plot.

 

            Not that Sherlock would admit such things.

 

            John came home in time for dinner. He looked quite tired, his shirt rumpled, sleeves rolled up to the elbow in a clear sign of faked affability in the face of certain unease.

 

            Sherlock had ordered Chinese takeout beforehand (best to avoid the lectures before they started). The offering of food had already been spread out on the (somewhat) clean kitchen table. As per Sherlock’s diabolical scheme he hadn’t showered and looked a right mess.

 

            “Sherlock.” John paused at front door. “Why are you covered in white powder…oh God is it _poisonous_?!”

 

            Typical paranoid John. Always convinced experiments were deadly pathogens (erroneous assumption - the deadly pathogens in experiments ratio was only 3:8).

 

            “Don’t worry. Its not anthrax.”

 

            “I’m more worried that anthrax was the first thing you thought to deny.” John cautiously circled the detective. “What is it then?”

 

            Sherlock grinned. Phase two almost complete. Perfect.

 

            Sherlock motioned for John to follow him into the bedroom, proudly flinging the door open like a circus conductor.

 

            “Bloody hell what did you do to the wall?!” John was sputtering, looking back and forth between Sherlock and the gutted wall.

 

            “Installed a more efficient pump and filtration system for my aquarium. Water now directly flows from the pipes to the appropriate heating and salinization compartments before being filtered into the tank.”

 

            Sherlock gave a megawatt grin. If this weren’t part of his plot, he might actually be proud of his invention. He had engineered a wave replication system to mirror the ocean. He would now sleep with the cradle of life behind his headboard, and he had built it.

 

            It was even more Godlike than his usual accomplishments.

 

            “The waste system recycles the water back through the filtration system three times before waist is finally rerouted to the flat’s drains. All of this will actually save electric and water costs.” Okay, maybe that last part was a lie.

 

            A necessary lie all things considered. John hadn’t slept since the case had started. After mutilated heads, an alley shoot out, and pro-bono undercover-waiter assignments the sleep deprived doctor was past ornery.

 

            “Fine. Whatever. Just make sure this gets cleaned up before Mrs. Hudson sees it.” John pinched his nose between his fingers in exasperation. “I got the bloody job by the way.”

 

            “Perfect.”

 

            Sherlock was practically singing as his lightly dusted fingers brushed up John’s arms. Elbows locked together he dragged the doctor down the hall, ignoring the sudden prickle of warmth in his belly. Scheming always made him euphoric. Obviously.

 

            “Lets go have dinner.”

 

~~~

 

            Sherlock was playing the violin when he heard it.

 

            Night’s fingers slid across his bow and he was drawing notes from his breast in steady strokes, painting mathematical patterns in the air, precision and repetition arching screaming into something tangible, a living sound vibrating beneath his skin, curling in the crevices of medulla and cerebellum. He could have been the last man left alive, and the darkness was perfect in it’s silent understanding. The refuge of his solitude.

 

            Then John had screamed.

 

            It was a high pitched note, the shrill cry of prey trying desperately to stay silent and still. It was hoarse and wet and disgusting in a way that made his skin crawl and his bowels clinch.

 

            And he should be mad. He should be furious. And he was. That was surely what pumped in his manic heart as he rushed up the stairs. Rage. Rage at being interrupted. Nothing soft and frantic.

 

            Nothing weak.

 

            And if he stretched to shake John, stretched to hold the thrashing man, it was anger that pounded blood in his ears. If was frustration that seized his throat, making swallowing impossible and air repulsive. It was surely fury that made him choke out John’s name, wrapping his arms around him because as John screamed and cried he _had to touch him._

And if Sherlock held him as John gasped, great wheezing breaths of fear and panic – because the Secobarbital wasn’t working as well anymore and it _should_ work, it should _stop this_ \- if Sherlock held him like a child, pressing his face in John’s hair,  smelling salt and phantom sand and remembering the ocean’s roar and the encroaching darkness, lonely and deep, stretching before them both….

 

            If those things happened. If Sherlock rocked him. If Sherlock held him in a wash of sentiment and _wrong_.

 

            Then it was surely out of frustration at being interrupted at the violin.

           

 

 

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> With this horrible depression I can’t guarantee my update schedule (I am going to try and update at least once a month for now on), but if I disappear again you can always contact me at http://lovelylaceandlilac.tumblr.com/ - I am completely open to questions and your support helps more than you can ever know. Honestly, I doubt this chapter would have gotten edited so fast without your lovely messages and support. Your kind words have been a guiding light in really dark places for me. <3


	10. Different Tactics

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After Baskerville a string of seemingly unrelated beheadings draw Sherlock and John into a complex case of narcotics and intrigue. 
> 
> Actions have consequences, and John’s PTSD comes to a head as the ghosts of both their pasts echo with the demons of the case. For Sherlock, history must be reconciled before the present can be solved.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 10 is edited and posted! 
> 
> Like I warned before, I desperately need a Brit picker and American and British forms of the service industry might be very different so please excuse any mistakes. This is just a brief (and I hope humorous) interlude in the narrative of the Case. A means to an end.
> 
> Thank you thank you for all the kind reviews left and messages sent to to tumblr. All the encouragement is really helping me edit and post this story. I don't want to get too specific, but for those of you who are worried I am seeing a doctor for my depression. Having a family member dying in front of you is utter shit, but I do have a good support group for what I am going through.
> 
> That being said, this fandom and writing have been my safe space during this dark time. Everyone needs an escape, and Sherlock and writing is mine when my depression is more accommodating. So thank you for sharing this with me - it really means the world.
> 
> As always I would like to thank my Beta reader Ali – your edits were instrumental and you have been amazing. You help me find words when there were none and spot problem areas I would have never seen. Seriously, you are the best.

** Chapter 10 **

 

_Growing impatient._

_Be more agreeable._

_-SH_

 

            It was the fifth text in 15 minutes and John had just been double sat by the ditz hostess. For a self-professed virtuoso of obtaining information while undercover, Sherlock Holmes had surprisingly little imagination or patience.

 

_Scoring the name of everyone’s drug supplier takes more than 10 min of small talk over the course of two days._

_-JW_

 

            John balanced the water tray on the balls of his fingers and made his way to the window tables to greet on his new guests. Waiting tables was never really something you forgot, and for once John was glad he did so much of it back in uni.

 

            His phone buzzed again. John ducked in the service way.

 

_I could do it in 5 min._

_-SH_

            Not glad enough, however, to resist the urge to strangle the detective for the crap assignment.

 

_Well then come here and do it yourself!_

_-JW_

 

_Busy._

_-SH_

John grit his teeth.

 

So was he!

 

            To John’s relief the two tables were regulars and requested their usual server. It was almost time for evening line up and John had 10 minutes to pump a name out of someone because he was not coming back here tomorrow!

 

            He filed in the back private banquet room with the rest of the evening shift. It was late afternoon and the servers were slowly congregating for their pre-shift meal behind the frosted glass of the heavy oak doors. The managers wouldn’t be down for another 5 and the older head weights were already out on the floor.

 

            Perfect.

 

            “Ready for the rush?” John slipped into his most affable face and nudged the friendly brunette Kaya in the ribs. She was in her mid twenties, quite pretty, and currently debating whether to tackle the ravioli or a salad.

 

            Most importantly - from what John could tell - she liked older men.

 

            “You’re the green one.” The girl laughed, handing John a plate. “It’s 4:30 on a Thursday. You haven’t seen anything yet.”

 

            Four more male servers filed through the banquet hall doors before digging in themselves.

 

            “Not my first tour of duty.” John chuckled, lightly brushing her fingers as he handed her the silverware.

 

            Kaya raised an eyebrow and snorted. “Yeah, I can tell.”

 

            John grimaced. The look on her face was anything but encouraging. To make matters worse, her two friends leaned in and started whispering behind her.

 

            Gossip. Great.

 

            Okay, so flirting was out. Christ these kids were young. John spooned his ravioli on the plate with vengeance. When had he gotten so _old?_

            Different tactic.

 

            “Yeah, well when you get to be as old as me the evening rush can be hard to handle.” John took a seat and leaned back against the wall. He was going to have to play the older father figure then. He could do that.

 

            “If you can’t keep up get out.” One of the males made a derisive gesture. “We’re not neglecting our tables to cover your ass.”

 

            John raised an eyebrow.

 

            The kid growled. “Richardson doesn’t allow section sharing.”

 

            One of the freckled girls leaned in. “What he means is Peyton has started too many fights over tip pooling for sections to be shared anymore.” She flashed John a warm smile. “You’ll get any help you need. Just motion someone if you’re in the weeds.”

 

            John raised his hands in a placating gesture. “Don’t worry, I gave myself a boost at 4. Need it at my age.”

 

            The servers leaned back, giving John a considering look.

 

            “Coffee?”

 

            John shook his head.

 

            “I’ve been in this industry for a long time” John leaned in, raising an eyebrow, “does coffee really keep anyone going during a 12 hour double on their feet?”

 

            Kaya nodded knowingly before digging in her ravioli.

 

            John suddenly wished his hair was scruffier. He wondered if he looked too straight cut to pass for this role. He was as far from a user as you could get. Then again, Sherlock didn’t exactly fit the profile.

 

            “Adderall?” Kaya finally broke the silence, swallowing tentatively.

 

            “Me? At my age?” John laughed and nudged her in the ribs again. “I’m too old for the college goods. Prefer the classy powder at time of life.”

 

“Who do you get your stuff from?” Peyton this time, his voice accusatory.

 

            Right. The moment of truth.

 

            John made a show of frowning and pausing over his food. “Eckleson. Down by Baker Street.”

 

            The boy snorted. “Eckleson’s stuff is shit. He over charges and cuts it with crap.”

 

            John was in.

 

            He gave an agitated rub at his nose. “You don’t have to tell me that. You guys got anyone better around here for the same price I’m willing to listen.”

 

            The boy leveled a hard look at John.

 

            “Jared” Kaya finally offered. “Jared will hook you up. He’s got stuff like you wouldn’t believe. Some of it I bet you’ve never even heard of.”

 

~~~

            John realized it while cleaning the coffee maker.

 

            Line up was over and he was readying his station, swabbing down the chrome machine with an efficient rub, still buzzing and euphoric, ridding that intangible feeling of satisfaction glimmering on the edges of his mind like the sheen of the polished kettle.

 

            He was happy.

 

            Here he was posing as a sodding server, undercover for one of Sherlock’s mad schemes to catch a head-mutilating psycho.

 

            And yet he felt something warm and fragrant curl deep within his bones

 

            Satisfaction?

 

            He saw it, bright as the silver varnish under the grime of used coffee filters and crusted cappuccinos, his reflection, face beaming with energy and mischief. He had been “undercover” for four days and he was practically giddy. When had that happened?

 

            He knew this feeling.

 

 

            When had this transformed? _This_. This “hobby” with Sherlock dashing through the streets of London, breaking into bloody Baskerville, and posing as some ridiculous waiter. When had _this_ become a fulltime job? His life?

 

            When was the last time he was at the clinic? A week ago? He had only worked a day. Dull and safe with snotty noses and the occasional somber whiff of lavender. When was the last time before that? Before Baskerville? Two weeks ago?

 

            Again, only a single day.

 

            Did he even he even want to go back? With Sarah looking as if she _knew_ which she surely didn’t.

 

            Could he even go somewhere else?

 

            Because no clinic outside of Sarah’s would accommodate his unusual hours. Christ he had only worked six days at the clinic this month. Did it even count as work, when the hours committed were more like a hobby than a job?

 

            Money.

 

            John had to be sensible. Because it was about the money.

 

            John wasn’t stupid, Mrs Hudson hadn’t even asked for John’s rent this month and John assumed – after a rather thrilling case involving a bit of political espionage – Mycroft had paid it out of gratitude.

 

            But that couldn't go on indefinitely. Both because Mycroft didn’t seem the type and John didn’t relish the prospect of living like a ‘kept’ woman.

 

            But Sherlock was so much more famous now, and if he could convince him to pick up even one or two of the more mundane high paying cases they could surely split the fee and get by.

 

            Right?

 

            Surely Sherlock could compromise if it meant not having to deal with John’s schedule any more? He was patronizingly possessive of the doctor’s time.

 

            _Bloody hell you’re thinking like we are a cou-_

The moment of panic was over, gone with the interruption on John’s mobile.

 

_Window table. Waiting. – SH_

Oh no. Oh hell no. John dashed around the service way in a breakneck sprint, tossing silverware and rag aside in steadfast denial. Because he had gotten the sodding information and Sherlock bleeding Holmes was not sitting at a window table rubbing the glass _he just cleaned_ waiting to be sodding served!

 

            Sherlock looked up from where he was rubbing his napkin inside his water glass with a look of pure disdain.

 

            _No no no NO!_

            “You missed several spots.” Sherlock held up the glass, peering through the end like a kid with a telescope. “You’re much better at housework back at the flat.”

            John was fairly sure strangling guests was grounds for immediate dismissal. It was starting to sound like an excellent way to quit.

 

            “ _What are you doing here?”_

 

            Sherlock raised one patronizing eyebrow as if the answer was painfully apparent.

 

            “You texted.”

 

            “I said I had the name!” John was trying not to shout, his words rushing out in a steady stream of hisses instead.

 

            “Right. And I want the name.” Sherlock picked up the teacup for examination. “And coffee.”

 

            “We have instant back at the flat.” John growled through clenched teeth.

 

            “You weren’t there to make it.” Sherlock shrugged.

 

            “You couldn’t, oh I don’t know, _go downstairs to Speedy’s?!_ ”

           

            “Theirs is days old and bitter.” Sherlock pulled a face. “Besides, they don’t have the name I’m looking for or the opportunity to question the suspect.”

 

            “Christ no.” Jared was a burly Ethiopian man covered in menacing tattoos. Whatever Sherlock was planning, this would not end well.

 

            “None of your nagging John.” Sherlock crouched down level with the table, peering at the breadbasket before him like an interesting dissection specimen. “What part of the restaurant does this Jared chap work?”

 

            “He’s a sous chef and no you can’t go back there-”

 

            “Perfect! I’m a health inspector.” Sherlock jabbed something in the bread and pulled out a laminated badge with a flourish. “Disgusting! There is a hair in my bread! I demand to see a manager about your kitchens!”

 

            Sherlock was pitching a royal fit now, and John suddenly wondered what the hell he had been thinking back at the coffee maker. He missed the clinic. The nice predictable clinic.

 

            “Is there a problem Sir?” The manager was over in a flash, radiating concern.

 

            Sherlock flashed his badge and made a scene worthy of the national theater. Truly, the detective had missed his thespian calling. John found himself trailing behind the two back to the kitchen as Sherlock swiped the dust of picture frames and examined door knobs with all the flair of an OCD government germaphobe.

 

            “You sir.” Sherlock, being the psychic deducing prat he was, had immediately spotted Jared and honed in on the man. “What are you preparing?”

 

            Jared looked up with an air of irritation. The intimidating Ethiopian man was known for having the flair of a culinary artist and with a temperament to match.

 

            “Duck and Portobello foie gras over an caramelized onion and acorn squash puree with porcini dusted almonds and truffle oil.” Jared enunciated every syllable with a posh imitation worthy of Mycroft.

 

            “I’m sure that will pair lovely with the French _Cuvée Pif Clos Roche Blanche_ I saw on the menu.” Sherlock paired back with equal upper-class disdain. “Your restaurant advertises it’s foie gras as being free range and not force fed. May I see you’re supply credentials?”

 

            “We import exclusively from Loire Valley farms, nationally accredited. The head chef has all the paperwork.” Jared leveled a glare. “We were inspected last month and found up to code. And I am rather busy before peak hours as our head chef is out with the flu. If you could wait a minute while I finish preparing this...”

 

            “No need to stop.” Sherlock suddenly radiated affability. “When do your shipments arrive?”

 

            Jared frowned, the muscles in his neck tightening in unease. “We restock everything on Wednesday.”

 

            “And your suppliers?”

 

            “Too many to name.”

 

            “Oh no, I merely meant the trucking company.”

 

            “Ah.” Jared smiled, suddenly relieved. “Six Plates Shipping. They handle all our perishables.”

 

            “Excellent.” Sherlock beamed. “If you have all the appropriate paperwork I am sure the manager can provide the documentation of all relevant purchases from the office while my server shows me the storage facilities. This is a mere formality to satisfy the organic lobby. The green party and Gordon Ramsey have created a terrible nuisance of new regulatory nonsense.”

 

            Jared laughed, now at ease, while the manager excused himself to collect the paperwork. Whatever had just happened, John had clearly missed it. He tilted his head, motioning for Sherlock to follow him into the back.

 

            “Six Plates Shipping, indeed.” Sherlock murmured as he walked, a slow smile curling along his face. “John…”

 

            Sherlock suddenly leaned in, his lips so close they brushed the shell of John’s ear in a flurry of goose bumps and prickled skin.

 

            “You had better quit soon…”

           

            Sherlock’s breath was hot in the heat of the kitchens and John felt his skin flush as a blush burned its way from his neck down to his fingers. The detective wore a lazy look of a cat satisfied with its prey.

 

            John knew that look.

           

            He should be afraid.

 

            “…because we are breaking in tonight.”

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am hoping to get the next chapter out within the next two weeks. However I can’t guarantee my update schedule (I am going to try and update at least once a month for now on). If I disappear again you can always contact me at http://lovelylaceandlilac.tumblr.com/ - I am completely open to questions and your support helps more than you can ever know. Honestly, I doubt this chapter would have gotten edited so fast without your lovely messages and support. Your kind words have been a guiding light in really dark places for me. <3


	11. Little Bird

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After Baskerville a string of seemingly unrelated beheadings draw Sherlock and John into a complex case of narcotics and intrigue.
> 
> Actions have consequences, and John’s PTSD comes to a head as the ghosts of both their pasts echo with the demons of the case. For Sherlock, history must be reconciled before the present can be solved.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yay new Chapter! Thank you again for all the lovely messages and reviews, it really helps motivate me to write, edit, and post. Writing is such a nerve wracking emotional process, we writers truly live for your words of encouragement.
> 
> I hope everyone likes this chapter, I struggle to write sexual tension they way I envision it between those two. It always seems to fall short from what I see in my head.
> 
> As always I would like to thank my beta Ali. You were instrumental for this chapter.

**Chapter 11: Little Bird**

   

_I have never, felt like this before._   
_Felt my body sinking, to the grassy floor._   
_No I have never, known a love like this,_   
_Felt the flaming arrows, of the hunter’s kiss._

_-       Rasputina ‘The Hunter’s Kiss’_

 

 

 

            In the summers mummy had taken Mycroft and Sherlock hunting.

 

            Sherlock had never understood it.

 

            Blundering through woods past all the interesting plants and sediment and smells and fungi just to shout and shoot some rabbit or fox the hounds had caught anyways.

 

            Dull.

 

            Mycroft had said it was the hunt. The search that got the blood flowing and boiling, thrumming in something deep and dark and primal that even called to mummy’s cells. That mandated that humans stalk and crouch and kill. Only they had to do it in a civilized fashion.

           

Intolerably dull.

 

            Serial killers did it. Plucked the eyes and threads from earth’s most deadly predatory, hiding in patterns of normalcy or eccentricity beneath the placid surface of society. It was hunting them, hunting the _ultimate_ predators, that filled Sherlock’s veins, that thrummed and satisfied his primordial instincts.

 

            It was this rush, this fragrant memory of woodsy smells and holding a riffle that filled his nostrils while he picked the lock of the restaurant’s back door. Six Plates Shipping. They had their prey in their sights, the hunt was on.

 

            John came jogging around the side, his breath visible in the cool night air. Wonderful John. Radiant John. It was brilliant how easily the doctor had adapted to the less legal aspects of Sherlock’s work. He almost seemed to glow in the dark, full of energy and steely determination, bright and fragrant with Sandy hair and sharp eyes. Sherlock inhaled deeply, is if John’s radiance were a smell he could also identify and savor. Savor and keep locked and tight, precious and safe. Brand the memory of work with the subtle whiff of tea, wool, and dandruff shampoo. John was part of it, part of the hunt.

 

            “You cut the right wires?” John nodded as the lock gave with a click. “Good. We don’t need an alarm ringing our favorite Sargent Donovan.”

 

            Banish the thought!

 

            “You know,” John trailed behind Sherlock as they picked their way through the darkened kitchen “If you suspected something questionable earlier we could have phoned Lestrade and done this the _legal_ way.”

           

Legal way? And there was John’s annoying conscious. Disappointing. Sherlock had hoped it would remain absent for the duration of the evening.

 

Or maybe forever.

 

Sherlock rolled his eyes. John was like a precious child, full of wonder before his parents broke the news that Saint Nick, the tooth fairy, and the statistical probability he would have a lasting marriage weren’t real.

 

The legal way. As if that was ever a practical option.

 

            “Takes to long.” Sherlock started up the stairs to the office, John in pursuit. “Too much red tape and paperwork.”

 

            “Because you always do the paperwork require-” John paused as Sherlock opened the office door. “Christ this place is a right mess.”  

 

            Sherlock frowned. There was paper scattered everywhere, the file cabinets had been ransacked along with the restaurant safe. The desktop computer was gone, indentations still in the carpet from where the casing had once sat. The desk chair was overturned, and several of the framed certificates were broken.

 

“Look’s like someone went to a lot of trouble to hide some evidence.” John picked his way past a precarious stack of paper. “They beat us to it.”

 

“No.” A smile was slowly beginning to spread on Sherlock’s face. “I merely wanted their shipping records. It appears our friend Jared had something infinitely more valuable to hide. We need to leave immediately.”

 

John’s head snapped up from behind a mound of paper. “Why? We just broke in?”

 

“This is a set up to look like a robbery.” Sherlock started down the stairs, John hot in pursuit. “Security is probably already on their way.”

 

As if on cue a beam of light cut through the hallway from the kitchens.

 

Security guards.

 

Sherlock felt his collar pinch and suddenly he was hauled into the nearby meat locker, John pressing the door shut with a muffled click.

 

It was pitched black. The freezer was only the size of a broom closet, John squeezed between Sherlock and the door.

 

Sherlock should be fine, was fine really. John had been right to pull him into the freezer. Pressed up between the doctor and the frozen shelving unit like a condiment in a fridge, he was fine in all this darkness. Because they could hear the muffled voices of the security team outside, and he didn’t have time to be arrested so this was alright, really.

 

            Except the locker was small and cold and _wrong_ , the ice coated aluminum painfully familiar.

 

The frost and the metal filled his lungs and cracked his ribs, sparking something hateful. Something horrible.

 

A memory.

 

And everything was tight and jarring. The angles slanted and sharp, tilted in jagged lines of white and steel, sterile and blue.

 

And he knew he had to get out. Break out. Bust out. Shatter in something weak like cartilage, crushing this sensation of bile and hollow bird bones, snapping beneath blooded fingers, broken claws and feathers ringing his head like a daisy chain. He was prince of the fledglings, impotent and broken in this wretched nest. This sterile trap.

 

And he curled up now, feeling the itch of feathers in John’s jumper, wool scratching frosted skin in a burn of irritation, too close and warm and _wrong_ for Sherlock. Because he was going to be a great mind, unfettered by the mind killer. The heart waster.

 

 

He was suddenly remembering, he was seven and alone, in a locker of frozen birds, slowly freezing to death. He had been storing them, little wrens and cardinals, in the summer estate’s grand industrial freezer for experiments. But the door had shut and locked this time, trapping him inside, confined in a freezing coffin in an empty kitchen. Like a specimen, like a wretched experiment preserved in its reckless stupidity playing games of fancy for all prosperity. Don’t imagine this. Don’t feel this. Wretched wretched freakish child, prince of fledglings with hollow bones. Because you _are not them_. _You are no God, not a creator, you are the experiment._

 

            And he was suddenly back, in the storage freezer.

 

            The freezer of the _bloody restaurant._

 

            And John was speaking, murmuring with tight arms around him and warm calloused fingers in his hair.

 

            And it was… _good?_

_No no no no…_

_Wrong._

“Let go of me.” He was struggling, spitting now. “ **Don’t touch me**.”

 

            John was looking at him, he could feel his ingratiating stare in the darkness, radiating concern and empathy. Sherlock snarled, this feeling burning like an open wound, hot and tender, his torn mind vulnerable to the one person who insisted at picking and prodding at the scab.

 

            “Sherlock,” John was whispering, the sound of concern ringing like the hiss of a viper in Sherlock’s ears. “Calm down. What the hell?”

 

            And John was gripping him tight, too tight in this blackness that should be anonymous. Would be if it weren’t for John and his horrible insistence to feel and pry. Sherlock was hissing in John’s ear, the syllable an intangible jumble of hot air against the man’s flesh.

 

            He could feel John tremble, could feel his pulse jump and hammer like a frantic bird and he suddenly hated it, wanted to punish it for being so close, for being a witness. John and his overly aggressive masculinity would be uncomfortable with this proximity. He would crush it, make him feel this excruciating discomfort as well.         

 

            He twisted, pinning John against the frozen door as he leaned over him, teeth scrapping the shell of John’s ear as he snarled, his voice a dangerous baritone, the sound rumbling across John’s exposed neck, the fine prickle of his hair.

 

            “I am **FINE.** ” His teeth grated skin, he wanted to flay him, rip out this brightness that invaded his senses in a hot burn that left him vulnerable and breathless. “I don’t need your **coddling.** ”

 

            “Bloody hell.” John twisted, throwing his knee foreword only to be trapped between Sherlock’s legs. There was no space to maneuver and Sherlock had the advantage of height. “You’re hyperventilating like you’re having a panic attack you prat. Don’t tell me you are fine.”

 

            John twisted his hips, shifting his weight in an attempt to snake behind the detective’s legs and buckle his knees.

 

            The motion brought John flush against Sherlock, pelvis grinding his own.

 

            It happened in a flash. Panic and rage and something open and raw as a white hot sensation seared through Sherlock’s mind, blinding and burning and he twisted and bit, sinking his teeth in the joint of John’s neck, feeling warmth suddenly bloom in his belly as something hard pressed against his thigh. And he ached with a suddenness, throbbing against the doctor’s belly so quickly that the silk of his pants and wool of his trousers rubbed and constricted in something excruciating. John was groaning or growling something primal and deep as he twisted away and felt the hot scape of doctor’s teeth against his neck. His stomachache rolled with nausea, constricting and knotting at this sensory loss of control. This sensation of falling and burning cracking against his mind, arching through his spine.

 

            They both jerked away, twisting with their backs to each other in the black and Sherlock felt he would hurl then and there. Felt the feeling of vertigo so acutely he must be going mad because if John left he would surely drown but if he stayed he would surely burn. And he wanted to strangle and kill the man, kill this feeling, this grossness that clawed within his skull.

 

            And the moment stretched for an eternity. The cold inhale of every breath burning against his lungs. The heavy silence grating against his skin.

 

            “Adrenaline.” John was choking something out, his voice unnaturally flat. “You were having a panic attack.”

 

            “Yes.” Because it was true, had to be. Panic, that was what he felt even now still between his legs throbbing and screaming so he couldn’t think or move. The nausea subsided, as if naming had power, because his serotonin was against him and his adrenal glans overworking.

 

            Panic Attack. The words hung like a bridge between them, comforting. And he no longer hated John, couldn't remember why he had ever hated John.

 

            “They are gone.” And the freezer was cold and there was evidence to gather and leads to track. “Let’s go.”

 

~~~~

 

If Sherlock had to describe his mood he would say productive.

 

John would probably say manic.

 

It didn’t matter what John thought.

 

Because Sherlock knew, knew with every fiber of his being that something was now wrong with him. Terribly wrong.

 

Sherlock sat crouched in his bedroom, running electrical wiring in the still exposed wall from the light switch to the piping behind the bathroom sink.

 

It wasn’t about the freezer. No. His body had merely responded to external stimuli. Disgusting yes. Disappointing perhaps. But not abnormal. No, it was the fact these memories that had been patently and permanently deleted were somehow resurfacing. The fact he did not have complete control over his mind.

 

That was unacceptable.

 

Sherlock had theorized the entire way home, and had come to the conclusion that all the socializing with john, Lestrade, and Molly to an extent was to blame. Ever since Irene Adler he had been expanding his emotional intelligence, and it was clearly to the detriment of his logical facilities.

 

Emotions were corrupting the foundations of his mind palace. There was no other explanation. Baskerville had been the final trigger.

 

Sherlock crouched further into the wall. He twisted several green wires around the plumbing, sticking them in place with some used chewing gum. The blue wires re-routed back to two vials containing water and dried ice attached with adhesive tape, peeking out beneath the sink pipes like hidden Easter eggs.

 

The solution clearly, was to exercise his logical facilities on a more routine basis. Experiments were in order.

 

Sherlock routed the electrical wiring to the flammable adhesive separating the two vials. When the light switch was flipped, the water would mix with the dry ice.

 

The first and foremost of his experiments was finishing his mad plan. He had been preparing for this moment for days.

 

The light switch had been replaced with a clapper that was sound sensitive. Across the room, Sherlock set his iPod home on a 1 hour alarm. Satisfied, he changed his clothes and headed up stairs where John was sleeping soundly after their night of breaking and entering.

 

John’s room was dark, illuminated only by the phone glowing in Sherlock’s hand. It was five am, and Lestrade had texted 15 minutes ago with the instructions that there were four new heads in the morgue. Mrs. Hudson would be sound asleep with her herbal soothers for at least another two and a half hours.

 

 

“John,” If he sounded harsh he didn’t care. “Get up we have to go to the morgue.”

 

John awoke with a sharp immediacy that sent something happy trilling in the back of Sherlock’s mind. Upon examination, it was satisfaction that John was so predictable and low maintenance. Sherlock judged the emotion an acceptable response and didn’t delete it.

 

John didn’t bother with breakfast, coffee, or speaking. Another fact that pleased Sherlock. The doctor dressed with ruthless efficiency and they were out the door. They didn’t bother talking, something professional and distant between the men on the walk over.

 

 

It fit Sherlock’s manic mood.

 

He needed information, not companionship.

 

Sherlock decided he would reward John by allowing the man coffee from the St. Barts cafeteria.

 

Not because he was being nice. Just clinical Pavlovian training for acceptable behavior.

 

 

            Molly was on duty, finishing up a night shift that had left her bleary eyed and unrefined, her limp pony-tail veering lopsidedly to the left. Tired, annoying, and eager to please Sherlock tasked her with the job of getting John’s coffee. Anything to get her out of the way.

 

            Four new heads to examine.

 

Oh it was Christmas!

 

            The four heads sat spread out on the examination table, cold and molted blue like giant robin’s eggs. Sherlock’s fingers itched in anticipation. John snapped on rubber gloves and went about his examination on the other side of the table.

 

            “The decapitation method is identical in all four heads.” Sherlock nodded, pleased at John’s clinical assessment.

 

It appeared that both heads had been cleanly cut with a blade saw, judging by the marks on the spinal column.

 

            “Yes, but the two-”Sherlock glanced at the tags containing the dental records “drug dealers have no mutilations. The two unidentified immigrant heads do. Notice the eyes.”

 

            John grimaced, shaking his head as Molly returned with the coffee. A good doctor did not drink over the examination table.

 

            John ran his fingers gingerly over the puckered ooze that had once been the eye sockets. “They have the same mutilations as the two previous heads.”

 

            “Close.” Sherlock preened, pleased. “But not identical. Molly bring out the other two heads.”

 

            Molly gave a chipper response that belied her own coffee intake and disappeared around the filling wall. John was running his fingers along the carved gashes behind the victim’s ears when Molly returned empty handed. She was white as a sheet.

 

            “They are gone.” Her voice trembled obnoxiously.

 

            “Gone?” Sherlock snapped irritably. If the morgue gave them back to the families or transferred them he would call Lestrade right now, time be damned. “Who has them?!”

 

            “No one who is supposed to. Their paperwork is still, you know, here…but the drawers are empty.” Molly was positively wailing now “Somebody must have stole them!”

 

            Sherlock grit his teeth. It was too much to expect competence from anyone who wasn’t him.

 

            “You still have the photographs, yes?” The morgue kept records for the police. It wasn’t a complete loss.

 

            John and Sherlock’s phone trilled simultaneously.

 

            Molly shook her head. “They are gone as well.”

 

            “Gone! That was evidence Miss Hooper!” Sherlock was snarling now as John removed his gloves and went for his mobile. “Who guards this facility that anyone is allowed to stroll in and pinch body parts?!”

 

            “You’ve never complained before.” John muttered, rolling his eyes before his face grew serious as he answered the phone. “Sherlock.”

 

            John must have gotten _the call_ then. Sherlock schooled his features into the appropriate expression.

 

            “You’re bloody filtration system overheated and exploded back at the flat!” John glared. “Inspector? Yeah. No. Christ Sherlock, the bathroom wall is completely destroyed! I thought you said that thing was safe?!” John made a strangled noise in the back of his throat. “What about Mrs. Hudson? Yes. Okay good!”

 

            Sherlock gave a show of sighing, peeling his gloves off with an indignant huff.

 

            Perfect.

 

            “Damage?” Sherlock motioned for Molly to leave while reaching with his other hand for his wallet.

 

            John put a hand over his mobile and gave a venomous glare. “The wall you share with the bathroom, the sink and medicine cabinet, and all the plumbing.”

 

            Sherlock nodded.

 

_The medicine cabinet._

The cabinet he had emptied out the contents of before they left.

 

            “Here” Sherlock extended Mycroft’s black American Express with a flourish. “Replace everything that was destroyed. Put it on my card.”

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am hoping to get the next chapter out within the next two weeks. However I can’t guarantee my update schedule (I am going to try and update at least once a month for now on). If I disappear again you can always contact me at http://lovelylaceandlilac.tumblr.com/ - I am completely open to questions and your support helps more than you can ever know. Your kind words have been a guiding light in really dark places for me. <3


	12. Apparitions

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After Baskerville a string of seemingly unrelated beheadings draw Sherlock and John into a complex case of narcotics and intrigue.
> 
> Actions have consequences, and John’s PTSD comes to a head as the ghosts of both their pasts echo with the demons of the case. For Sherlock, history must be reconciled before the present can be solved.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> New chapter! Thank you for every kind review and email, they really help me push past my writers block. Hopefully this chapter was worth the wait.
> 
> As always I would like to think my Beta reader Ali. Without her wonderful comments and criticism none of this would have been possible.

 

**Chapter 12**

 

_Listen devil_   
_I will let you go_   
_I have carried you for years_   
_But we end so sore_   
_I won't feed you anymore_   
_This is as far as I will take you_   
_I should've turned you down from the start_

-The Tiny ‘Know your Demons’

 

 

 

 

          John never had much interest in politics.

 

          His father had. He always came home at the same time from the office, rumpled and tired, wanting a beer and telly. It was the news. And it was always accompanied by a running commentary on the parliamentary system.

 

          John loved queen and country. Had bled for it. But he didn’t care the specifics of how it worked.

 

          Didn’t care that is, until he was stuck waiting over half an hour for a prescription refill.

 

          And he was a doctor!

 

          His mobile buzzed.

 

_New heads. Come immediately. – SH_

 

          John peered around the long winding line. This might require drastic measures.

 

_Trouble at the morgue. Assistance required. – SH_

 

          It had been four days since the four new heads had been discovered. Sherlock was practically crawling up the walls trying to figure out the connection. And this was quite a feat, considering Sherlock’s bloody filtration system had blown up half the walls.

 

          Good luck.

 

          Dead fake Lebanese immigrants, dead reporters, dead drug dealers, electrical engineering and secrets at high scale restaurants didn’t add up to John. Oh, and body snatching. Couldn’t forget that.

 

          John checked the line again. This would take forever.

 

_About to be banned from St. Bart’s. Need immediate intervention. – SH_

 

          John sighed. Okay. Plan B.

 

_Try apologizing. I’ll be there in fifteen. – JW_

 

          John thumbed through his contact list. He really didn’t want to do this.

 

          Nothing for it.

 

          “Hey,” John took a steadying breath, “Sarah? Yeah, it’s me. I need a favor.”

 

~~~

 

          Sarah was not happy to see him.

 

          That didn’t stop her from being absolutely radiant.

 

          She was in her office, hair in a prim high ponytail with minimal makeup and a jut lip promising a world of sass.

 

          If John was honest with himself, he would say he missed her.

 

          Instead he took a seat in front of her desk.

 

          “What can I do for you John?” Sarah rested her elbows on the desk, tucking her hands under her chin and leaned forward with one perfectly raised eyebrow. “Have you come for _advice?_ ”

 

          Advice. The way she said the word held shades of meaning.

 

          Meaning he did not care to address. Not after wrestling had turned to rutting in a meat locker. Not after he had accidentally pressed against Sherlock’s erection and the man had _bitten him_.

 

          Not after that action, that panicked bite, had instantly hardened John’s cock to the point he had almost licked the panicked man.

 

          “No.” John frowned in displeasure. “I didn't come for advice.”

 

          Because he didn't need advice. John was a doctor, and Sherlock, for whatever reason had been having a panic attack. Intense fear caused erections in the same manner as intense arousal. He had scared Sherlock, and then made the mistake of brushing against the most sensitive part of the asexual detective’s body.

 

          Of course the panicked prat bit him.

 

          Of course, in a heightened state of fear – having been deprived of a good lay in months and a good wank in a week – John’s body responded.

 

          He was a doctor.

 

          Nothing to dwell on there.

 

          “Sarah,” John struggled to swallow, “I need a refill on Sherlock and my Secobarbital prescription.”

 

          “You should have 3 weeks left.” Sarah’s voice was sharp. “What happened?”

 

          John shifted in the chair, wishing national healthcare wasn’t so sodding slow. “One of Sherlock’s…. _experiments…_ well it bloody exploded and wiped out a good chunk of the apartment. Including the medicine cabinet.”

 

          “So he’s not using.” Sarah’s face softened considerably. “That’s good. Okay.”

 

          Sarah sighed, reaching into the top left drawer of her desk. John felt the sudden burn of indignation. Of course her first thought would be junkie Sherlock. He should have expected as much.

 

          “Alright,” Sarah tore two sheets off her prescription pad. “If I am going to write this you are going to have to be honest. How are you sleeping?”

 

          John grimaced.

 

          That was a subject he did not want to touch on.

 

          “Not well. Horrible actually.” That was the truth. “Dreams of the war. Of…past comrades”

 

          That was also the truth.

 

          Technically.

 

_John in the compound, fingers in Matthew’s hair as the man sucked his cock dry. John gasping and rutted his mouth with frantic desperation, moaning behind a door like a frantic teenager._

 

_John looking down and realizing Mathew’s dark hair had turned curly, his cheek bone’s sharp and high._

 

 _John looking down at Sherlock, the man running his tongue along the underside of John’s swollen cock, whispering, “Don’t touch_ _**me** _ _…. I’ll touch_ _**you** _ _.”_

 

_John in the bottom of an empty stairwell, a body at his feet._

 

“ _ **You.**_ _”_

 

_That final moment in the morning, all faux Tuscan Tiles and empty air._

 

“ _ **You**_ _weren't supposed to be here.”_

 

_John waking up with an aching erection._

 

_Tears that he weren't sure were rage or grief._

 

          Sarah handed John both prescriptions, the set of her mouth conveying her determination that, even through all this awkwardness, she would help him.

 

          Awkwardness. If only she knew.

 

          Didn’t matter.

 

          She would give him something to help him sleep.

 

          Dreamless sleep.

 

          John was fine with that.

 

~~~

 

          “Oh my God.”

 

          There were five heads on the morgue table. At least, what used to pass for heads. The skin was hardened blue and purple riot of wrinkles and spider veins, the Pollok pattern of arteries cut by deep gouges in the eyes. The pattern was vicious, crusted with dried blood and hardened ooze, a testament that this had been done while the victims were still alive.

 

          Three of the head’s belonged to children.

 

          Children and adults that had clearly been starved, the gaunt folds of facial skin stretched unnaturally thin, aging them all like some twisted version of a shrunken head.

 

          John felt the room spin, the floor dropping way, the feeling of panic rolling beneath his ribcage.

 

          He resisted the urge to hurl.

 

          “Don’t be dramatic John.” Sherlock’s voice cut through, cold and clinical. “Molly is bad enough.”

 

John bit back bile, taking a deep breath and crossing his arms. This was not the first time he had seen the corpses of mutilated children. He had seen loads really. Afghanistan had been full of them. But this wasn’t a war zone, and somehow, that made it worse. London was his home, and it should be safe from… _this_.

 

A memory of a different time.

 

“ _No one suspects the young ones.” Matthews shrugged while John picked the metal splinters out of his newly disinfected neck. “It makes them more effective.”_

 

“ _It's always the children though.” John narrowed his eyes and dug his tweezers further in the wound. “When they aren't being coerced into being the bomber they are the orphan.”_

 

“ _Don't forget the new recruit.” Matthews scowled, titling his head for better access. “This is a war zone. Has been for over 50 years. There are no innocents here. Only shadows of normal people who will pull you down while drowning or stab you with their last breath if given half the chance.”_

 

_John paused, the splinter of foreign white bone lodged between the forceps now hovered over Matthews neck._

 

_Matthews twisted his head, spying the tiny bloody fragment._

 

“ _Not mine?”_

 

“ _No.”_

 

“ _An exemplary suicide bomber then.” Matthews took piece of human shrapnel between his fingers and laughed.“Every inch a weapon.”_

 

          John gagged.

 

          Sherlock seemed unaffected.

 

_“You don’t care.”_

 

          The room swam, and John was unsure if his past or present self had asked the question of concern.

 

          “No John, I don't.”

 

          Sherlock's face frowned, as if looking in on a particularly tiresome specimen in a glass jar.

 

          “Does this surprise you? Are you going to say ‘timing’ and glare again?”

 

“ _There is a time and place for everything John.” Matthews had grinned. “And this hellhole is ripe for the worst of it.”_

 

          “Timing only means something if there are feelings to substitute.” John choked out.

 

          Sherlock’s brow furrowed.

 

          “We don’t know anyone here.”

 

_“What better place for gallows humor?” Matthews had shrugged. “Than the grave of nations?”_

 

          John must be dreaming.

 

          Only Sherlock was clothed and Matthews wasn't bleeding out, his memory an open wound.

 

          “John.” Sherlock's voice slowed, “We don’t know these people.”

 

          The heads.

 

          Yes.

 

          The heads and the morgue.

 

          John looked up at the detective, feeling his sanity fray at the seams.

 

          He would take hold of where he was. Sherlock was being intolerable, insufferable.

 

          He wouldn't stand for it then.

 

          He wouldn't stand for it now.

 

          “Christ, Sherlock…it’s…you don’t have to know them to be horrified by this. Even you should feel something. These are children. This is _sick_.”

 

          Something shuttered behind Sherlock’s eyes.

 

          “Millions of people die every day John.” His arms arched wide like wings. “You are personalizing a statistic.”

 

          A statistic.

 

 “ _Casualties of war.” Matthews looked off in the distance. “Scattered like so much sand. No more than we deserve.”_

 

          “No.” John shook his head, “Christ no wonder you almost got kicked out of Bart’s-” Sherlock opened his mouth to protest but John kept on.

 

          “Shut it, don’t give me that twisted shit. They don’t die like this, Sherlock. This is horrible. This is beyond what anyone deserves.”

 

“ _And what do we deserve?”_

 

          John shook his head and took a step forward.

 

“ _Besides each other?”_

 

          No.

 

          Sherlock wouldn't be that voice to him. Not that ghost.

 

          Not here, not in this life time.

 

          “Yes it is horrible. I know that John. I agree. I just don’t _feel_ anything for it.”

 

          Sherlock seemed to search for something in John’s face. Not finding it he turned around and begin lifting the folds of skin on the heads, swabbing the dirt and grime beneath. A row of slides lined up along side the autopsy table. Sherlock had apparently been examining the sediment samples under the microscope.

 

          John felt his hold on reality stabilize slightly. He wondered if Sherlock had read his near episode for what it was.

 

          John grit his teeth.

 

          Ghosts could stay ghosts.

 

          “So, who almost barred you from Bart’s?”

 

          Sherlock stiffened by the microscope. “Molly.”

 

          “Molly?” John raised his shaking clenched fists and paused, staring at the wavering appendage.

 

          Mycroft once said his hands never trembled under duress.

 

          What did that make him under here?

 

          John shook his head again.

 

          “Jesus I know you are cold but she…she worships you.” John looked up, forcing focus. “What could you have possibly said to make her threaten you?”

 

          “She was upset with the heads.” Sherlock was staring intently into the microscope, unwilling to meet John’s eyes. “And then I found out the previous four heads had been stolen yesterday, while she was on duty…”

 

          “You didn’t blame her?” It wasn’t a question, John already knew.

 

          “She was crying about how she lost them...which, technically she did. How anyone could miss someone taking _four heads_ is beyond comprehension!”

 

          “So you yelled at her?” John was indignant now, rage covering something too insubstantial to grasp “Why? Even _you_ can’t feign ignorance on that one!”

 

          Sherlock pulled away from the slide and frowned, as if debating the right words. He finally pulled a face and met John’s eyes.

 

          John blinked, the vision of someone younger from a lifetime away blurring before him again.

 

          “In attempt to maximize my deductive utility I have opted to exercise mental facilities that detract from the use of my frontal lobe on a less regular basis.”

 

          John frowned and cleared his throat.

 

          His words echoed a from lifetime ago.

 

          “So in other words in order to work better you are going to stop affording others emotional courtesy?”

 

          Sherlock gave the microscope knobs a particularly vicious twist. “This case has gone on far too long.”

 

          “Because you are emotionally coddling us?”

 

          “ _YES!”_ Sherlock snapped.

 

          “I see.” John nodded, turning to grab his coat. He couldn't deal with anything now. He needed some time to clear these demons. “Hope it works out because with that reasoning you are finishing this one alone.”

 

          “John wait,” Sherlock jumped up, motioning at the heads as if they would make his argument for him.

 

          John stared at the heads.

 

          New ghosts to be sure. More fodder for his runaway subconscious.

 

          When the heads failed to illicit the reaction Sherlock clearly expected he let his face droop, eyes round and dark. “The children John. We have to catch the killer.”

 

          “Don’t try and guilt me into something.” John turned back around, reverie broken, hissing with rage. “It won’t work.”

 

          “I need you John.” Sherlock pulled another face, as if the very thought disgusted him. “I work better with you around.”

 

          “And I work better when you-” John's vision blurred again, and he wondered if he wasn't have a rather peculiar version of a panic attack. “-are not _playing_ at being an insufferable psychopath.”

 

          “Don’t be immature.” Sherlock narrowed his eyes. “Thanks to this,” Sherlock held up a slide with a flourish, “I’ve narrowed the sediment down to several areas in London. After cross referencing them with Six Plates shipping routs and my homeless network’s citing’s of Jared’s contacts I have found the warehouse where these heads are from. We’re going to break in tonight.”

 

          Sherlock crossed his arms, as if the matter were decided. As if John's complete and utter blind obedience weren't a given.

 

_Isn't it?_

 

          Matthews stood beside Sherlock now, their silhouettes blurring together seamlessly into pale flesh and a sirens call.

 

          John hissed. “And if I don’t come.”

 

          The apparition waved a dismissive hand. _“Then I’m going alone.”_

 

          “I’ll have Lestrade tail you.”

 

          “ _You don’t know where I’m going.”_ The ghost gave a cold smile. _“I can lose him.”_

 

          John wasn't sure who he was talking too anymore. The conversation interchangeable.

 

          “You could _die_ without backup.”

 

          “ _Whose fault would that be?”_

 

          The ghost grin a flash of bone and teeth.

 

          And in that instance John wasn't certain who had actually died, which one had left him with hollow words and scattered earth.

 

          He would always be the moral compass of the twisted.

 

          Pointing fools north, the direction of the lost.

 

          “I’ll come.” John reached for the door, unable to be around the man any longer. “But if you want actually want a functioning colleague and not an emotionally blackmailed flatmate working under protest.”

 

          He turned and gave the apparition a pointed stare, open skull gaping at him like a crushed egg.

 

          “You will never attempt to threaten me with your potential death.”

 

 

~~~

 

          This warehouse wasn’t abandoned.

 

          It was one of the structures left over from the turn of the century, cracked and brick with arched windowpanes and the remnants of old coal stacks. It was neatly locked behind a chain-link fence lined with barbed wire and had only two broken windows. Shipping trucks lined the parking lot and the lawn was somewhat maintained. An office building from the sixties had been added on, the minimalist stucco and concrete looking decidedly out of place jutting from the right side of the building.

 

          Sherlock had brought wire cutters, ripping a neat round hole they could crouch through by a crop of trees. John felt like he was in some sort of ridiculous spy cartoon, dressed in black and breaking into private property _again._

 

          Sherlock broke a window on one of the fire escapes and they crawled through, emerging in a bland office with file cabinets and potted plants.

 

          “What exactly are we looking for?” John whispered as the made their way out into the linoleum hallway.

 

          “Dirt and mold.”

 

          “Well there was plenty of that outside.” John looked around. He had stormed out of the morgue and back to Baker's street earlier. Phantoms and reawakened PSTD were nothing a hot shower and swig of scotch couldn't fix before a old fashion breaking and entering. Now they were creeping along in the office section of the factory, and so far in between the linoleum and piped ceilings it looked like a normal, if slightly industrial warehouse.

 

          Not Afghanistan.

 

          Good.

 

          “We are looking for someplace with construction. A basement.” Sherlock motioned John to follow him into the stairwell. “Some place where people could be kept.”

 

          “You think people are being held hostage in an active business establishment?” If John’s voice was sharper than he intended it was because he was still angry.

 

          “No John, I think they are patiently starving while chained to a BBC news reel.”

 

          “Of course not.” John hissed. “Because that would be too _easy_.”

 

          The stairwell led the more industrial part of the plant, opening to the main warehouse. The ceiling of the main room arched up at least four stories and was the size of John’s first uni dormitory. Machinery from presses to conveyer belts cast hulking shadows, resembling metal dinosaurs in the gloom.

 

          Sherlock gave a sharp disappointed exhale.

 

          Apparently this wasn’t what they were looking for.

 

          They picked their way along the wall until Sherlock crouched down before a door labeled mechanical maintenance. After five minutes of jiggling the lock with what looked like a metal spider from Sherlock’s kit the door swung open with a loud pop.

 

          They stood perfectly still.

 

          A place this size would have security guards.

 

          There was nothing but silence.

 

          Sherlock paused, fishing a folded map out of his great coat and shoving the thing into John’s chest.

 

          It photocopy of what looked to be a roman town and was covered in Latin.

 

          Of course.

 

          Because a roman map in Latin was _essential_ for any breaking and entering escapade in a modern factory.

 

          John rolled his eyes.

 

          He had given up trying to follow the man’s logic long ago.

 

          Sherlock slowly progressed through the mechanical maintenance room, which in truth seemed to be more of a complex. The detective was crouched low to the ground, swabbing his fingers across the concrete floor as if he was following some invisible trail.

 

          Another two flights of stairs and they were down in some sort of basement level, massive pipes and humming boilers resembling something off the Titanic or a submarine lining the walls. Sherlock was frowning, circling the narrow hallways before returning to a side room filled with pipes.

 

          “They’ve been cleaning the floors.” Sherlock muttered, crouched low, still swabbing with gloved fingers.

 

          “Gotta keep up to code,” John frowned, “You would know, mister _health inspector._ ”

 

          “Not down here.” Sherlock moved along the walls, stopping before a bathroom door plastered with construction tape and warnings to stay out. “Why bring a waxer and a washer down for concrete floors in the basement? And only specific rooms?” he held up his fingers. “Dust. It never lies.”

 

          Sherlock set about gingerly peeling back the construction tape and picking the bathroom lock.

 

          The door opened to a heap of tiles, pipes, and rubble.

 

          That and one very large hole.

 

          A large black hole with sharp broken stone stairs leading down into the darkness.

 

          Sherlock grinned. “Me first.”

 

          “You first?!” John gave an incredulous hiss. “Because I am going to argue the order of climbing into a dark hole leading to God knows where in the basement of what is for all intensive purposes a mob run factory like a school boy? By all means, _you first._ ”

 

          “Don’t be ridiculous John.” Sherlock gave a blank stare and fished out a metal cylinder from his coat. “I brought a flashlight.”

 

          John pinched his nose and cleared his throat, because really, there was no arguing this one.

 

          Sherlock flicked on the light, illuminating a damp stone tunnel slick with fungus and condensation. John realized they were entering something very, _very_ old.

 

          “Roman tunnel?” He murmured, pulling out the map, trying to keep the awe out of his voice.

 

          “Excellent John.”

 

          Sherlock positively crooned with condescending satisfaction.

 

          “More likely a roman sewage system. London is built on top of Londinium, old capital of Britannia, it’s nearly impossible to do construction or connect a pipeline without uncovering something medieval or Roman.”

 

          “So you think the family was being held hostage down here?”

 

          The tunnel gave a sharp right turn and then broke up into several tinny crumbling corridors. The smell of human excrement still hung faintly in the musty air.

 

          “Hmmm, maybe a Roman compound.” Sherlock frowned before giving John a distracted glance. “Of course, what better place to hid hostages than beneath a mob infiltrated factory full of noise and immigrant laborers. I would imagine only a handful of the construction workers knew about it’s existence, and those who did know kept their mouths shut for fear of the historical preservation society coming in and shutting down the entire factory, putting everyone out of a job. No one came down here. It's the perfect hiding place to starve someone.”

 

          Sherlock was grinning as if the whole situation was positively marvelous.

 

          “You don’t have to look so happy about it.” John snapped, fighting the urge to feel impressed. “How did you know?”

 

          “The fungus.” They turned around another sharp corner, leading to several small empty rooms. “Caves and underground tunnels have very specific mold and fungi. And the dirt lining the heads wasn’t topsoil. It was sediment from deep below the surface. Conclusion: some sort of undiscovered ruin deep beneath one of their factories.”

 

          Sherlock paused in the cramped room, picking up the shackles that littered the floor. “They were kept here. With others by the looks of it.”

 

          “Christ.” John clenched his fists. Dried blood and fingernails lined the crevasses in the walls. They had been chained here to starve like animals.

 

          He felt a roll of nausea and bit it back.

 

          This was too surreal, even for Afghanistan.

 

          “Where are the others?”

 

          “They weren’t murdered here.” Sherlock frowned. “I suspect we will find their heads very soon.”

 

          “We need to call Lestrade.”

 

          Sherlock nodded, swabbing the walls and placing the samples in little bags. “There is nothing else down here without proper lighting and tools.”

 

          “What, you want to bring Anderson down here?”

 

          “Only if we can leave him.” Sherlock gave a wicked grin.

 

          “I’m sure he would want the same for you.” John bit back a crooked smile.

 

          Nope.

 

          He was still irritated at the detective’s nonchalance and emotional blackmail.

 

          Sherlock could not weasel his way back into John's good graces that easily.

 

          “This location, it seems too trafficked to be safe.” John cleared his throat as they started up the ancient stairs. “Why a factory in use, why not an abandoned lot or where house?”

 

          “Abandoned lots are full of curious kids and homeless squatters. You saw that at the other factory.” They begin picking their way out of the tunnel, Sherlock radiating glee. “They had suffered long periods of inactivity and starvation, long enough that no one had found them, and yet people were bringing them water. Too much traffic in an abandoned lot and someone would notice. No one notices people coming and going in a working establishment, and no one disturbs construction, especially if it had been purposely stopped and everyone had been told leaked knowledge of the construction site would shut down the whole factory.”

 

          “Brilliant.” John muttered begrudgingly. He couldn't help himself.

 

          “Obvious.” Sherlock sighed, masking his praise hungry ego.

 

          They emerged from the tunnel shivering, the smell of factory circulated air a welcome relief.

 

          “Not obvious to some.” John squinted, trying to adjust his eyes to the brightness of the pipelined hallways. “And you still don’t have to act so bloody pleased about the whole business. Those people likely starved too death.”

 

          “Don’t be ridiculous,” Sherlock fiddled to lock the door back behind them. “Autopsy reports clearly showed they were _tortured_ to death.”

 

          “Sherlock!” John was hissing, trying to keep his voice down as every footstep echoed across the factory floor. He checked his phone, they didn’t have a signal yet. “That’s not the point!”

 

          “Not another tiresome lecture on the plight of victims.” Sherlock gave a melodramatic snort as they mounted they main stairwell. “They are _victims_ of _crime_. Of course they suffered! It comes part and parcel with this business, rather like _war_. Your repetitive displays of surprise and indignation are both pointless and unwarranted.”

 

          “Pointless? You need a bloody lecture on their plight just to remember they were people and not evidence!”

 

          John tried to keep his voice down to a whisper, utterly failing in the attempt.

 

          “With out me as a buffer you outright horri-”

 

          “Security!” A voice cracked out of the gloom several flights up. “Identify yourselves!”

 

_Shit._

 

          John’s legs moved on instinct, they were dashing back down the stairs pulse pounding as Sherlock thundered ahead flinging the door open and dashing into the main factory room. Shots rounded overhead and they were _being fired at!_

 

          Not normal security guards then.

 

_Shit. Shit. Shit!_

 

          John felt his muscles burn, lungs pounding as he pushed harder into a full sprint, dashing and dodging around machinery the sharp ring of bullets cracking against his eardrums in time with the beat of his heart. He was back in Afghanistan, ducking and weaving behind cover hand in hand with Sherlock as they navigated the battlefield. Four more shots rang overhead and Sherlock was swearing, fingers clenched as he hauled John forward and they were running down the stairwell towards the fire exit. And John suddenly knew, remembered this sensation, as everything slowed down and the Sherlock's sudden shout faded back into the muffled sound of his own breathing and heartbeat. Pain lanced through the top of his right shoulder, tearing cloth and skin apart as something hot ripped through him.

 

          He had been shot.

 

          The alarm screeched as they pushed against the red metal bar and out into the parking lot, siren echoing behind them in a broken wail as they ran towards the trees, Sherlock's shouting an intelligible language reminiscent of Pashtun in the encroaching storm. The beating drums.

 

          Or was that his own heartbeat?

 

          Sound was fading now, as were colors. They were almost to the hole on the fence. The ground rushed up again in a wave of black and dirt. And Sherlock was screaming, hauling him through the hole in the fence with blood slicked hands and frantic eyes.

 

          John was still running, running and panting as his heartbeat seemed to pulse out of his body and gush down his arm in a river of panic. He ran and ran and ran until they were in an alley, propped against brick and grime and Sherlock was dialing with blood-slicked fingers screaming at John to stay calm and let him see the wound.

 

          Screaming at him not to leave him.

 

          John felt something slur, words thick and sticky on his tongue and he heard sirens, saw flashing lights as Sherlock gripped him, fingers wound with torn fabric, fisted on the top of John’s shoulder in attempt to staunch the bleeding.

 

          John had been shot.

 

          And everything went black.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am hoping to get the next chapter out within the next two weeks. However with everything going on in my life right now I can’t guarantee my update schedule (I am going to try and update at least once a month for now on). I can always be contacted at http://lovelylaceandlilac.tumblr.com/ - I am completely open to questions and your support helps more than you can ever know. Your kind words have been a guiding light in really dark places for me. <3


	13. Precious

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After Baskerville a string of seemingly unrelated beheadings draw Sherlock and John into a complex case of narcotics and intrigue.
> 
> Actions have consequences, and John’s PTSD comes to a head as the ghosts of both their pasts echo with the demons of the case. For Sherlock, history must be reconciled before the present can be solved.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> New Chapter. Thank you for everyone who has been reading and reviewing, it particular Moonshadow and Kandeekane - your wonderful reviews helped me push through and get this bit written.
> 
> As always I would like to thank my wonderful beta Ali who was unwavering in her support and inspiring in her advice.

 

**Chapter 13**

  

_Cracked eggs, dead birds_   
_Scream as they fight for life_   
_I can feel death, can see its beady eyes_   
_All these things into position_   
_All these things we'll one day swallow whole_

_\- ‘Street Spirit’ Radiohead_

 

 

 

Hospitals were disgusting.

 

Sherlock used to love them. Clean and sterile with such lovely machinery emulating heart and lungs breathing and pumping in some sort of twisted symphony - mimicking organs and flesh and bone in a way that was truly beautiful to behold. Hospitals were a testament to intellect. Their very existence a fist of defiance to the limits of human frailty.

 

Not anymore.

 

Sherlock sat curled on the chair. His hateful chin resting against his hateful knees as he ripped and stripped and _tore_ the pleather off the seat cover with his grossly incompetent _worthless_ hands.

 

Because John lay there like a little broken wren, pale and fragile with hollow crushable bones, ashy grey against stiff sheets wound with gauze upon gauze and tube and wires the beeped and blipped and hissed. Sherlock wanted to rip them out off the wall and scream. Scream at such a travesty that needles were in John’s arms. That saline and pain killers were pumping through his veins.

 

He hated hospitals now.

 

 _Loathed_ them.

 

All the machinery looked like a mockery. A hateful intrusion in John’s body. Like a leech or a maggot sucking and squirming their wires and tubes. Like a morgue pumping embalming fluid or a prenatal unit with all the fragile wrinkled pulpy infants. All these tubes and blinky lights hissing and slurping like animals and _they should do more_! Why wasn’t John awake?!

 

Sherlock had hissed and spat at every nurse. Hadn’t let them near.

 

Out.

 

All of them.

 

He would readjust John’s bedding and change the bags and tap the tubes and don’t look at him don’t approach him _don’t touch him he is_ _**mine**_ **.**

 

He was clearly going insane.

 

Insane and over and lost and gone inside this world that had narrowed to sandy blond hair framing an ashen white face and he would give his blood, wanted to, needed to so it would be pumping and curling beneath the surface of that fragile epidermis because John was _**his**_ and Sherlock was lost to know what that even meant or entailed except that John _couldn’t leave._

 

Madness.

 

“Matthews.”

 

The words were thick and slurred and John was mumbling about some former comrade, his father, about the war. Nonsense. All of it. The man was heavily drugged. The bullet wound had been just a nasty superficial entry that skimmed between skin and muscle at first. The guard (certainly not the regular type as he disappeared before the police arrived) had shot from above, the bullet entering the tip of the shoulder, chipping his acromion bone and shoulder blade while grazing a few cm deep through skin and fat down his back at a crocked slant that stopped near his ribs, requiring a slew of stitches over a wide area. Only surface damage. But John had a near panic attack in the alley, had fainted, and when he came to had a full-blown meltdown in the hospital.

 

“ _It was a mistake”_

 

_John was screaming, heaving himself out of bed and running out the door, tubes and bandages ripped right out in his fury to escape._

 

“ _I wasn't supposed to be there!”_

 

The disoriented doctor seemed to think he was dying in Afghanistan when he woke. Sherlock and the nurses had to tackle him and John fought like a rabid animal, thrashing and tearing his injury wide open. They had quickly sedated him and had to staple the skin shut, the reopened bullet graze now a torn angry gash extending halfway down his back.

 

PTSD they said.

 

Disgusting nonsense.

 

John had been royally angry with him before in the morgue. And the factory. That is how he got shot, yelling at Sherlock to feel more. As if Sherlock couldn’t feel when John was lying here pale and still…

 

If only he could touch him.

 

_No._

 

When had he reached towards the man?

 

_No._

 

Sherlock pulled his outstretched hand back as if burned. Because he needed to touch John, and this need was impossibly worse than the fact John was lying all still and pale like a frozen wren.

 

_No._

 

But he wasn’t going to touch John because that would be an irrational act of sentiment and sentiment was surely what thrummed behind his eyes and bubbled in his veins.

 

_No._

 

But drawing away from John was even worse. And as his outstretched hand retreated something pulsed and scratched under Sherlock’s skin like a feral cat, hissing and clawing its way in his gut until he couldn’t breathe properly and that was a laugh because breathing was not a conscious action. Scrapping and scratching and gasping there was _that_ _feeling_ prickling beneath him in rolling black waves of nausea.

 

_No. No. No._

 

He was blinking blood shot eyes in time with the machine and he had suddenly gotten up and ripped tubing out of the nearby unattended nurse’s cart. And he was winding the tube, the hollow fragile tube so empty and crushable like John’s fragile bird bones, around John’s wrist, knotting it off in panicked jerks.

 

If he could only tie John down, tie him down and keep him _here_ then everything would be just fine. If he could only tether him to Sherlock John couldn’t leave and if he couldn’t leave this ghastly abyss that had gapped open in Sherlock’s sternum could snap shut and he could breathe again.

 

Sherlock twisted the tubing around his own wrist, twisted it until it was tight and bit and the sting, the throb of his blood trying to pulse and circulate ached loud enough to cut through the roar in his chest. He gripped the tubing tight now, because they were linked and John _wasn’t_ leaving, and curled up in the fetal position in the chair.

 

Someone had shot John.

 

And he needed to think.

 

~~~

 

“Sherlock I can walk.”

 

John cleared his throat and drummed two nervous fingers against the wheel chair.

 

“If this is your attempt at initiating conversation I must insist you stop immediately.” Sherlock snapped.

 

John had woken up last night only to be greeted by sullen silence from the detective.

 

He had just been discharged this morning. He was terribly embarrassed and had been apologizing to every nurse and doctor in sight.

 

It was clearly Sherlock's turn.

 

“Well considering some bloke scared all the cute nurses away,” John attempted an awkward laugh that died halfway. “I’ve got to talk to someone.”

 

Talk.

 

Sherlock titled his head over the back of the wheel chair considering.

 

“No.”

 

“Don't Sherlock. Just don't. Look just let me walk and listen and....just stop!” John grasped the wheels to stop Sherlock from pushing him any further down the hall. “Bloody hell I’m not an _invalid_ and you aren't deaf!”

 

Had John said the word invalid sharper than the rest?

 

Probably.

 

Sherlock hadn’t slept in Five days.

 

Five days?

 

That seemed about right.

 

Sherlock nodded and continued pushing. “Doctor's instructions.”

 

John was cursing and flailing his free good arm. It bothered Sherlock that there was a good arm now, as opposed to both being, for all ostensive purposes, fine.

 

But one was most definitely not fine. One arm was in a sling, the shoulder bandaged up to John’s neck. John had needed an obscene number of surgical staples down his shoulder and back, and moving his arm too freely might rip them open.

 

“Oi I know this,” John motioned to the wheelchair in disgust, “is hospital policy, but since when do you listen to the bloody rules let alone someone else's instructions?”

 

Was it really part of hospital rules? Sherlock had made that up.

 

Sherlock glanced a critical eye at the popcorn white ceilings.

 

Probably.

 

He kept pushing.

 

Because they were connected now. He was pushing, moving john forward with the squeak of rubber and rattle of wheels and if John was being pushed he couldn’t get up and leave.

 

But he could, couldn’t he?

 

It would be so easy for john to stand, sputtering and red with indignation and the insistence that he _could_ walk. He would apologize for his behavior and then walk off, wanting to go home on his own to prove he wasn't an invalid and nurse his injured pride alone.

 

Unacceptable.

 

Sherlock grit his teeth, fisting boney fingers in the neck of John’s jumper.

 

“Sherlock?”

 

The other side of his neck, the _good side._

 

“I don't need your version of moronic sentiment about social faux pas.”

 

It was wool and plaid. Absolutely marvelously hideous.

 

Precious.

 

“Shut up and s **tay**.”

 

Infinitely precious.

 

They were connected now.

 

He twisted his fingers in the jumper, skin brushing against the fine hairs of John’s neck.

 

He kept pushing.

 

“I’m not…” John’s snapped before his voice trailed off into something almost wistful. “Never mind. Fine...”

 

John cocked his head to the side. The fine downy of his hair brushing against Sherlock’s fingers in a trail of goosebumps.

 

“…be an arse.” John exhaled softly.

 

 

~~~~

 

 

 The cab ride was horrible.

 

Worse than the hospital with its eggshell white walls and freshly sterilized linoleum.

 

The driver was Pakistani, fresh from Karachi, and wove through London cars like he was dodging mules and carts in back alley’s.

 

John was white knuckled as the driver spoke on his mobile in rapid Pashtun.

 

Every turn, every twist and Sherlock could see lights and color and he could almost taste the glass twisting in John’s mind. An accident than?

 

Maybe John had been in an accident in Afghanistan?

 

Maybe a jeep had rolled over. Maybe they had hit an IED.

 

Sherlock should ask, shouldn’t he?

 

No. He _should_ be able to tell. He should know from the way John clinched the door handle, from the set of his jaw as cars whizzed past, from the veins in his forehead all prominent and bulging.

 

All Sherlock saw was John.

 

Correction. Not John. Not John at all but a jumble of nerves and fear and memories of smoke and sand wrapped up in grey eyes and clinched fists.

 

There was so much _John_ there was nothing else.

 

No deductions.

 

And in that moment he _hated_ him. Hated him with every raw fiber of his being. Hated every mole, ever hair, every cell, every _molecule_ of John that clouded his mind in a jumble of fear and something else dark and heady.

 

 _How_ _**dare** _ _he!_

 

Sherlock’s hand darted out to the doctor. He would strike him, strike away the veil and everything would be normal again and he rose a fist to John’s wrist and _grabbed_ at whatever _this_ was.

 

The air grew thick.

 

Sherlock was clutching John’s wrist as if he would break it.

 

And now it was wrong. Something was horribly, horribly wrong. John’s eyes flickered over in surprise, grey and bottomless and Sherlock counted the lines around his eyes as he bit back incandescent rage.

 

“Sleep.”

 

Sherlock blinked, releasing John’s wrist and turning his head to the side.

 

“Sleep?” John leaned forward, his face painfully open and questioning.

 

“I haven’t.” Sherlock muttered.

 

It was true.

 

“Ah.” John frowned, the lines around his eyes creasing.

 

Sherlock clenched his fist next to his leg. The space between them seemed impossibly wide.

 

“The shooting…” John choked on the words. The silence stretched again. “Christ, you smell horrible.”

 

“The hospital doesn’t have courtesy showers.”

 

“Your clothes,” John’s eyes flickered over as he pursed his lips together in recognition. “the same?”

 

Sherlock tilted his head to the side in a small nod. He felt as if he was nine again with a tongue coated in peanutbutter, speaking was too difficult.

 

John nodded in acknowledgement. “You ought to sleep when we get back to the flat.”

 

Sherlock snorted.

 

London was flashing by in a blur.

 

Sherlock would sleep just fine.

 

He planned on taking four of the stolen Secobarbital.

 

Just for good measure.

 

~~~~

 

_Everything was grey._

 

_Moriarty was there, with that reptilian smile, hiding in the folds of a security guard’s uniform._

 

_As if he could guard anyone. Keep anything ‘safe’._

 

_And Moriarty was singing, screaming in that sweet tone of sickled death and decay, rotten apples and grit, rusty screws and saccharine sugar._

 

“ _Oh precious. Have you ever heard a rabbit scream? Shrill, desperate precious. The cry of prey, the desolation of the weak.”_

 

_Moriarty raised his arm, clutching a slate grey gun with the relish of a child._

 

“ _Scream for me now. Scream my precious thing.”_

 

_Except he wasn’t aiming at Sherlock._

 

“ _Sing for me.”_

 

_The gun was pointed at John - precious fragile killable John. And Moriarty was singing louder now, his voice spiraling through the air._

 

“ _Let me taste all of you, taste you in the depths of your nails and marrow, desperate and frightened. Let me lick it up, curling and unfurling in ribbons of red and blue.”_

 

_Moriarty took one step closer._

 

“ _So lovely precious thing.”_

 

 _Close enough to reach out and_ _**touch** _ _John._

 

“ _So fragile wretched thing.”_

 

_And Sherlock was rooted to the spot, feet trapped in mud and muck, sucking him under in waves of panic._

 

_The gun cocked._

 

“ _Let me taste you.”_

 

_Moriarty smiled._

 

“ _Let me break you.”_

 

_He pulled the trigger._

 

“ _Let me love you.”_

 

_And Sherlock screamed, screamed because he knew he was dreaming the blood and smoke. This nightmare._

 

 _And he howled, howled because even through the dream he knew. Knew John would one day perish and it would kill him. Knew within the depths of his flesh and bones, that something about John, something dwelling inside him_ _**for** _ _John, something that craved sandy blonde hair and a jutted lower lip-_

 

_-something that clawed and flayed his heart alive from the inside out-_

 

_-something nameless, fearful, and surely mad-_

 

_-something loathsome and precious-_

 

_Because he loved John._

 

_Needed him._

 

_Hated him._

 

_And he was going insane._

 

Sherlock awoke with a rabbit’s scream, a shrill cry so desperate it was almost silent to human ears.

 

Because screaming would alert John.

 

And Sherlock would kill him. Fuck him. Consume him.

 

Sherlock would break him open and live inside the man, eating him from the inside out.

 

And it would ruin John.

 

Because Sherlock ruined everything.

 

So he reached beneath the bed with trembling fingers.

 

Because four Secobarbital had not been enough.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am hoping to get the next chapter out within the next two weeks. However with everything going on in my life right now I can’t guarantee my update schedule (I am going to try and update at least once a month for now on). I can always be contacted at http://lovelylaceandlilac.tumblr.com/ - I am completely open to questions and your support helps more than you can ever know. Your kind words have been a guiding light in really dark places for me. <3


	14. Sand and Chlorine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After Baskerville a string of seemingly unrelated beheadings draw Sherlock and John into a complex case of narcotics and intrigue.
> 
> Actions have consequences, and John’s PTSD comes to a head as the ghosts of both their pasts echo with the demons of the case. For Sherlock, history must be reconciled before the present can be solved.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi Everyone,
> 
> Sorry for the long time without an update. My father finally passed from his cancer and it became hard to write for a while. I know WIP are the bane of readers existence and I have not in any way abandoned this story. While I can't promise an update schedule, I finally feel I am getting closure on the grief and loss this past year and have been getting more involved in my hobbies. You never get over the loss of a family member, but they aren't kidding when they say time makes even the worst wounds easier to bear. I guess what I am saying is I hope this dark chapter of my life is moving behind me and I can resume living my life and regularly working on this story I love. 
> 
> Thank you so much for everyone who continued to read, leave comments, or message me encouragement through my tumblr. You really helped give me a sense of encouragement and support through an incredibly dark time.

 

**Chapter 14**

 

 _laughing shaking taking oaths_  
breaking sacramental cups  
we pour the magic in our coats  
thinking it can leave with us.

_~Amanda Palmer ‘the living room’_

 

_ The doors inside the corridor were white and flecked with blood. So many tiny red dots in the yawning hallway, scattered like crimson pomegranate seeds, tart and caught in the teeth of the building. _

 

_Caught in the jowls of the beast._

 

_There should have been a red kazak runner adorning the floor. John knew this as even as he stepped over mounds of rubble, jagged heaps of concrete and clay shifting beneath the floor like bodies moving under bedding. The men flanking the walls didn’t seem to notice the rumbling floor, standing ever at attention with faded fatigues and shadowed eyes._

 

_And John knew he was in Afghanistan because he could smell it._

 

_The scent of cumin and spoiled yogurt, of sour breath and rubbing alcohol, filthy boots and unwashed jackets, black coffee and gasoline. The scents of hell and home, the dwelling of the damned and weary._

 

_The smell of ghosts._

 

_The radio buzzed in his ear like dying insect, it's poison seeping into his skull, the angry flutter of desperate wings beating against his eardrums._

 

_'Have you heard the Arabic proverb Johny?' The earpiece sang 'Adwuwuwun aaqilun khayrun min Sadiiqin jaahilin.'_

 

_John kept moving forward._

 

_'An intelligent enemy is better than a stupid friend.'_

 

_The hallway doors were images now. I_ _ mages of Matthews chain smoking in a hospital bed over a game of gin, a twelve year old girl in a red poppy field crying for her husband, mess-mates hunting for a camel spider in Sholto's bunk, a one armed fruit vendor peddling pistachios and pomegranate in a street full of rubble, the faces of the first man he ever shot and the first man he ever  _ _saved._

 

_'Or would you prefer it in Urdu? A more fitting,_ _**kind** _ _interpretation.' The earpiece giggled 'Naadaan dost se daanaa dushman behtar hai.'_

 

_Images of Matthews easy grin. Ugly stitches and laughing shoulders. Sturdy fingers and sweat slicked skin._

 

_'An intelligent enemy is better than a_ _**naive** _ _ friend.' _

 

_The images blurred together and the odors grew stronger._ _ The smell of dust and waiting, of coriander and cigarettes, the acerbic stench of human sweat and dirty hospital bins, the taste of ash and disinfectant on his tongue. _

 

_The man at the end of the hall turned to John, motioning him forward through the arched doorway with the wave of his gun, his face a shadowed grin of black and bone._

 

_'Be polite Johnny-Boy.' The earpiece hissed. 'Don't decline the invitation.'_

 

_John felt his stomach roll, his shoulders heavy with the weight of his vest._

 

_He stepped into the light._

 

_The narrow stairwell was a spiral twisting down into the heart of the building, the slick orange floor tiles curving out of sight like a surreal yellow brick road. He circled down and down, ignoring the wrought iron rail and running his fingers along the rounded white plaster walls like a child would trace the inner tunnel of a split spiral shell._

 

_Except here there was no ocean._

 

_He could only smell chlorine._

 

_Round and round he went, faster and faster until his earpiece drowned out his rapid heart beat, cracking and hissing sparks in his ear._

 

_'Down we go Lover-boy.'_

 

_And he was at the bottom of the stairs, the indoor pool stretched before him like some garish florescent lake of flickering shadows as far as the eye could see. Bodies floated face down in the surface of the water, their molted green fatigues spread out like bloated lilly pads._

 

_And Sherlock's emerged out of the gloom into the atrium, his gun raised towards the doctor, face pale and startled in the artificial light._

 

_“John.” The name was barely a broken whisper._

 

_Foreign words echoed through the radio and out of John's split lips“This is a turn-up, isn't it Sherlock?”_

 

_The detective's face shuttered and fell, something soft and vulnerable twisting in his eyes._

 

_“You weren’t supposed to be here.” Sherlock whispered._

 

_The detective's gun went off._

 

_And Sherlock's face shattered, dispersing in fragments of light and shadow that scattered across the pool like skipping stones. Dark smoke pour forth from him, rushing towards John in rolling black waves of ash._

 

_And Moriarty suddenly materialized in the detective's place in a bespoke Westwood suit, gun still trained on John in the flickering light._

 

_John staggered from the weight of body that barreled out of the smoke and collapsed against his knees. Sherlock, crumpled and pale, feebly trying to staunch a gunshot wound through the neck._

 

_“Oh God,” John wasn’t sure if it was a whisper or a curse, “_ _**you** _ _.”_

 

_“You always knew, didn't you John?” Moriarty croaned, locking his stance, gun level to John's heart. “You always knew.”_

 

_John didn’t hear the second gunshot when Moriarty pulled the trigger, the bullet tearing through his shoulder like a lovers caress._

 

_Only Sherlock's broken sob, “You weren’t supposed to be here.”_

 

_And John fell back through the curtain, back past the navy blue pool stalls, back onto to the foot of the orange tiled stairwell. And the ceiling arched above him, red and raw like the inside of an open wound, the scream of an open mouth._

 

_Moriarty stepped forward, grabbing Sherlock and hauling him upright before John, the detective's limp limbs awkwardly dangling like an injured gazelle._

 

_“Never forget, Johnny-boy.” Moriarty sang softly. “Never forget Lover-boy exactly where you are.”_

 

_“You weren't supposed to be here.” Sherlock cried, reaching out._

 

_“Do you remember where you are now?” Moriarty shoved his gun under the pale detective's chin “You are at_ _**war** _ _Johnny-boy.”_

 

_“You weren't supposed to be here.” Sherlock whispered, fingers outstretched towards John in the morning light._

 

_“We are all at war.” Moriarty gave a soft smile and shook his head. “And you forced me to burn the_ _**heart** _ _ out of you.” _

 

_The sound of that next final gunshot ringing loudly through the room._

 

          John swam awake with the cotton mouthed sensation only truly strong drugs could provide.

 

          Not strong enough, however, to stop his dreams.

 

          His heart was pounding. It was hard to breathe. The bed was soaked and the acerbic odor of sweat permeated the room.

 

          It didn’t matter.

 

_Right?_

 

          John swallowed painfully.

 

          If he wasn't careful he would crack.

 

          He had liked medical school. Had loved the army.

 

Extreme pressure transformed carbon into diamonds. John Hamish Watson was no different.

 

Pressure was familiar. It was almost pleasurable, the electric fizz of neurons sparking against his nerves.

 

And this time was different.

 

_Right?_

 

John touched his bandaged shoulder with ginger fingers.

 

Different in a good way.

 

He shifted out of bed, slowly peeling off his sweat soaked clothing. Knotting his dressing gown at the waist John straightened his shoulders and marched downstairs.

 

Before, in Afghanistan, he had been betrayed. He had been crippled, rendered useless and discarded like a broken toy. His life, his career, his dreams had been stripped from him with the single pull of a trigger.

 

This time, he had been shot on a case. The bullet was a clue, not a death sentence.

 

_Right?_

 

          It was horrible. But the only thing it truly changed was providing the first solid lead they had had in weeks.

 

          John clenched his fists. It was all a matter of perspective.

 

          This is how he would have to think of it.

 

          Otherwise he would break.

 

          The doctor looked around the empty dawn lit kitchen. Sherlock wasn’t up yet. Not unusual during a long case. The detective would stay up for days and then crash at odd intervals.

 

          Good. John needed some time to himself to make tea and think.

 

          John shifted his shoulder, ignoring the spark of agony trilling down his spine. He had been really lucky. The bullet had grazed his shoulder and cut straight down his shoulder blade and back. It three inches to the right and the bullet would have shot down through his collarbone from above, piercing his subclavian vein and going straight through down through his lungs, stomach, and pelvis. He couldn’t have asked for a cleaner wound, all things considered.

 

And the drugs were lovely.

 

          John frowned as the kettle started to simmer. He fetched a mug from the cabinet and poured the hot water with his good arm.

 

          He would have to be careful with Sherlock. John was on strong codeine; something Sherlock would love no doubt. And the man seemed right traumatized.

 

          Sherlock in the cab looked ready to beat John. Angry at the doctor for getting shot no doubt. As if it was his fault.

 

          Yet Sherlock in the hospital had been….well clingy for lack of a better word. Whether it was from guilt or fear John wasn’t sure. Both seemed equally alien and unlikely in the detective.

 

          John clutched the mug and settled into the living room armchair. Placing the mug on the side table he flipped open his laptop. He had research to do.

 

          He wouldn’t give Sherlock a chance to treat him like an invalid. A burden.

 

          As if on queue, the detective appeared in the doorway.

 

          “Mornin’ sunshine,” John’s voice was more chipper than he truly felt.

 

          “Hnnnnnng, ‘od off.” Sherlock staggered in the doorframe before dropping into a kitchen chair. The detective rubbed his eyes like a child before flopping his head forward into his arms with an overdramatic ‘Hurmph’.

 

          Right.

 

The police hadn’t found anything at the factory besides evidence people were had been detained in the Roman hole. By the time the police came to question everyone entire groups of computers, several file cabinets, and most importantly employees were missing – their records of addresses leading to abandoned homes or parks. The rest of the employees seemed horrified or begged innocence to any knowledge of foul play.

 

          Sherlock was in a royal snit about it.

 

          “Shouldn’t I be the one pouting?” John frowned. Normally Sherlock was more alert than this. “Got shot for you. Ta.”

 

          Sherlock raised his head and squinted one baleful eye. “He was never aiming at me.”

 

          “Because I’m obviously the bigger target.” John muttered.

 

          Sherlock collapsed his head back into the table. “You obviously have the bigger mouth.”

 

          “Some of us are used to getting up early.” John returned his attention to the laptop. Sherlock was in a right sour mood as expected.

 

          It didn't matter.

 

          Right?

 

          Sherlock continued his epic sulk until John finally stood and offered to make tea. Apparently being shot had not changed the status quo one bit. Sherlock was still an overgrown brat and John his brow beaten caretaker.

 

          Well at least he wasn’t being treated as a burden.

 

          John looked up from the simmering kettle as three sharp knocks and a ‘wahooo’ issued from the front door. Sherlock cast a baleful look at John before getting up to open the door, clearly upset the doctor was too busy to do it for him.

 

          “Morning Dearies.” Mrs. Hudson bustled in with a full tray of breakfast. “Thought you boys might be getting peaky with John not- put that kettle down young man!”

 

          John froze, kettle in hand, as Moriarty's voice echoed softly through his skull.

 

_'_ _ Be polite Johnny-Boy.' _

 

          John turned in a daze, allowing himself to be gently pushed into the living room and relieving Mrs. Hudson of the brown parcel tucked under her arm along the way.

 

_'Don't decline the invitation.'_

 

          “Of course, thank you.” John nodded his head and blinked at the parcel in his hands. “Package from Lestrade?”

 

_Focus._

 

Sherlock merely gave a pained sigh and flopped face first into the sofa. “The external hard drive from Isabella Robert’s house. The only one they didn’t take. Worthless no doubt.”

 

“Your girlfriend, John?” Mrs. Hudson began steeping the tea.

 

Sherlock issued a muffled snarl from the sofa cushion.

 

“Thankfully no.” John narrowed his eyes, shaking his head and pulling his robe tighter as he set the parcel aside and looked up with forced concentration. “Dead reporter, Mrs. Hudson.”

 

“Not like John’s girlfriends have much of a pulse to begin with.” Sherlock waved a dismissive arm above the sofa. “Understandable mistake.”

 

          “Sherlock.” Mrs. Hudson gave a disapproving tsk and brought the mugs over. “A dead girl and John’s been shot. Shouldn’t you be doing something to help?”

 

          “I am helping.” Sherlock remained facedown on the couch. “I’m thinking.”

 

          “Being an arse helps his brain function.” John sighed and received his second cup of tea this morning. He needed it. “Thanks Mrs. H.”

 

          Mrs. Hudson busied herself around the kitchen while John pried the box open and hooked the external hard drive up to his laptop with clumsy fingers. When it became apparent the boys didn’t need anything else she gave John a quick peck on the check and left.

 

          Sherlock, meanwhile, had flipped on his back and was methodically drawing on the wallpaper with a look of pure disgust.

 

          John frowned.

 

          Sherlock must have been entering his restless 'phase' of the case. If John was right, the detective would spew soon spew nothing but vitriol as his mind spun in place, running on fumes and obsession until he solved it or dropped.

 

          John could relate.

 

          “What you need is a distraction.” John took a tentative bite of the beans and toast Mrs. Hudson brought up and felt his stomach clench.

 

_Beans, toast, black coffee._

 

_“_ Something to get your mind off things.” John murmured, slowly pushing the offending plate away. “Why don’t you do an experiment or something?”

 

          “Why don’t you ever shut up?” Sherlock snapped.

 

          “Christ can you not do this today?” John threw his hands up. “You’ve been a right prat ever since you woke up. Go back to bed, take a walk, _dissect a body_ for all I care. Just get out and stop ruining my attempt at...at....”

 

          John trailed off, Moriarty's voice echoing softly in his ears.

 

_“Never forget exactly where you are.”_

 

_“...._ a soldier's b reakfast.” John finished softly, staring at his plate.

 

          Sherlock jerked up off the couch, mouth opened as if to say something before he snapped it shut with a snarl.

 

“Fine.” He hissed.

 

Sherlock shoved off the sofa and started rummaging through the kitchen cabinets, collecting various beakers and Bunsen burners.

 

John let his mouth fall open in surprise.

 

For once the prat had actually listened.

 

Should he...?

 

John shook his head and snapped the morning paper open, the ghosts of the past still whispering from the dark recesses of his mind.

 

“ _Don't question it soldier.” Matthews laughed. “Just keep moving.”_

 

 

***********

 

Four days later John found himself slumped against the hallway banister regretting the suggestion that Sherlock ‘go do an experiment’.

 

Sherlock had been doing experiments ever since.

 

John shifted his shoulder and cringed. He had just jogged home and hoped he hadn’t torn any stitches.

 

_Option 1: Go upstairs and check on Sherlock. Promptly be grilled about current condition and causes._

 

John gagged. The hallway reeked of - was that _sulfur_? Upstairs was clearly bad.

 

_Option 2: Collapse in the hall and have another panic attack. Avoid Sherlock’s deductions, possibly at the expense of the apartment._

 

John quickly went over the list of explosions that produced the smell of sulfur. A list memorized in the name of flat mate sanity.

 

The list was _very_ long.

 

And Sherlock had pinched an uncomfortably large amount of potassium perchlorate from the morgue’s chemist yesterday.

 

John had better go upstairs.

 

It was all the chavs fault. Who played paintball in the alley ginnel on Sunday?

 

Paintballs that splattered in explosions of crimson, pelting john in showers of red and panic. His head had swam, and all he could see was the sky, Afghan blue, vaulted and detached from the rising leviathan. The submerging well of fear, bubbling out of the alley and drowning John behind the bins.

 

The smell of sulfur hit again. _Bloody hell._

 

‘ _Suck it up John. Fear is irrational. Death by exposure because your flat-mate burned down the building and scared away friends and family who might take you in is a real possibility.’_

 

John bit his lip hard enough to bleed. Anything was better than crying in the alley jinnel. Retching in the alley, all brick and saline and wet, the hurling wash of acid and fear.

 

_Right. Upstairs it is._

 

The apartment was still intact, albeit covered in smoke, when John managed to open the door. Smoke curled along the ceiling in dark grey plumes. The scene was hazy, disorienting, and all too familiar. There were four massive pots smoking on the cooker, covered in crusted green _something._

 

Sherlock was perched on a chair, pale fingers tented beneath his chin as he stared off into space. He looked unharmed.

 

John exhaled in relief.

 

He promptly regretted it.

 

It smelled like Sherlock had lit a dozen matches in a vat of rotten eggs. Which, knowing Sherlock, was not out of the realm of possibility.

 

“Christ, Sherlock.” John clamped both hands over his face. Definitely rotten eggs, maybe a tire fire too. “What were you cooking?!”

 

“Cooking?” Sherlock looked up, seeing John for the first time. His eyes focused and he smiled like a child.

 

“Brussel sprouts.”

 

Sherlock stood in a jumble of limbs and navy. He sniffed the air and had the nerve to look perturbed.

 

Perturbed at _John._

 

“You didn’t take them off the stove?” Sherlock frowned. “Mrs. Hudson will be upset.”

 

Brussel sprouts!John forgot about the smell, forgot the crimson paintballs, hyperventilating in the alley amidst the jeers of teenagers. It all receded before the absurd picture before him. Cooking? _Cooking Brussels sprouts?!_

 

“I’ve been at the clinic refilling my prescription!”

 

Sherlock’s face pinched. “I thought you’d been unusually quite. Especially talking about that intrusive Sarah.”

 

“Talking about Sar- Never mind. Let it go.” John pinched the bridge of his nose and reached to turn the cooker off. “Sherlock why were you cooking bloody Brussels sprouts?”

 

“Mrs. Hudson brought them over. They were a gift from Henry Maddock’s garden. Obvious why he’s giving them away: they smell dreadful.”

 

Maybe the alley Chavs weren’t so bad. Maybe murder wasn’t so reprehensible.

 

“How many were you cooking?” The pots were filled too the brim with a hardened green crust. “Christ, how long have these been on the stove?!”

 

Sherlock looked thoughtful.

 

“Three point eight six kilos. I’d venture three hours since you didn’t turn them off.”

 

“I WAS AT THE PHARMACY!”

 

“Apparently.” Sherlock sniffed airily. “Always popping off. So unreliable. Looks like the pots are now ruined.”

 

“Unreliable! Unreliable!” John vacillated between the urge to murder Sherlock or laugh hysterically. Sherlock had come up behind him and was placidly poking the crusted green residue on the cooker. “Why did you cook them all at once. Why cook _at all_?!”

 

“Necessary. Mrs. Hudson insisted on giving them too you, said you looked like a walking case of scurvy. She said to freeze them but I have three heads in the ice box. Thought it would be better to boil them. Avoid your complaining about dinner tonight.” Sherlock wrinkled his nose. “It reeks of 2-propenyl isothiocyanate. Nasty. Positively vile!”

 

John smiled, the urge to laugh was beating the urge to strangle. Sherlock looked like a kid refusing to eat his vegetables. Which, in this case was warranted.

 

“You never learned not to overcook Brussels sprouts?” John gave up, he was laughing now. “You are only supposed to cook them three minutes, not three _hours_. Otherwise they release sulfur. Although this hardly counts as cooking.”

 

Sherlock glared at John. He didn’t like not knowing things. Being laughed at was an even worse offense.

 

John laughed harder.

 

“I don’t store information on cooking cabbages. I suppose that’s the sort of thing they teach you in the army. Positively _vital_ information.”

 

John was bent over laughing now. Teasing Sherlock was marvelous.

 

Memories of the alley were receding, soon gone, lost against the absurdity of this maddening – delightful - man.

 

“You’d ah-be surprised. You learn a bit of everything to survive in the army.”

 

“You’re telling me you learned about cooking brussel sprouts from the army in Afghanistan?” Sherlock arched an eyebrow.

 

“Ah- no, not exactly…”

 

“In basic training?”

 

“No-ah…”

 

“NATO forces. The American’s _love_ pointless information.” Sherlock was being downright playful.

 

“Haha, no…”

 

“From the mujahedeen, then?” Sherlock’s eyes twinkled.

 

“No Sherlock! My mother loved to cook an-“

 

“Thought so.” He was grinning boldly.

 

“She wanted me to learn to cook before med-school! She was afraid I would starve you ridiculous prat!”

 

Sherlock directed a pointed look at John’s pot belly.

 

“Should have taught you to make bulgur instead. Brassica oleracea doesn’t grow in arid climate.”

 

John had stopped laughing and was looking balefully at his belly. “It’s from all the beer.”

 

Sherlock rolled his eyes.

 

“You’re worse than Mycroft. I’d say go on a diet, but that might involve cooking more cruciferous vegetables.”

 

The flat filled with another round of laughter.

 

“No,” John wiped tears from his eyes, chuckling. “We don’t need any more of that.”

 

Sherlock glanced fondly at John as he placed his hand on the crook of John’s elbow and squeezed. The gesture was warm and intimate. John smiled, clasping Sherlock’s shoulder with his good arm and squeezed back.

 

Sherlock suddenly looked stricken. He took two steps back, as if John had struck him.

 

“I have to return to my experiments.”

 

John frowned. Sherlock has been agitated the last few days, angry and then inexplicably warm.

 

“Fine.” John tried to smile. He wouldn’t admit that the alley had made him starved for comfort. The moment was over.

 

Sherlock frowned as he looked, really looked at him since he first walked in.

 

“Your eyes. Something was wrong. Earlier.”

 

“Nothing.” John looked up and smiled. “Nothing anymore.”

 

And he meant it.

 

Sherlock hissed, his tone suddenly cold and distant. “Fine.”

 

John took a step back in surprise.

 

But Sherlock was gone, slamming his bedroom door in a flurry of rage and navy silk.

 

~~~~~~

 

_John was in Lashkar Gah._

 

_Had been for a good while now judging by the room he was in – a private bunk assigned six months after his transfer from Gamsir. From Sholto. From Matthews. Six months of grit teeth and hollow smiles, of sleepless nights and letters he never wrote to Mary._

 

_And the walls laughed, giggling that transfer had been for the best. Better to amputate the hand then lose the arm._

 

_Better to amputate the heart than lose your future._

 

_And the whispers should stop because John had amputated it, weighted it down with memories of war and dumped it in the Helmand River at Gamsir, the channel between lover and friend, between war and peace._

 

_Soldiers took comfort in all forms._

 

_It didn't mean anything._

 

_But as the shadows crept forward and Matthews emerged in the doorway smelling of cumin and hashish, of sweat and gunpowder, John knew he would be stained this time._

 

“ _Oh God,” John wasn’t sure if it was a whisper or a curse, “you.”_

 

“ _I made you a promise.” Matthews gave a wolfish smile, full of teeth and temptation._

 

“ _I left that man on the other side of the river.” John moved to block the tall soldier's way._

 

“ _Little liar little Liar” Matthew’s voice croaned out sickle sweet over the cacophony of gunfire in the distance._

 

_John was pushed up against the hard plaster, hot and swollen with need. He could still smell the sharp chorine of the river nearby, the watery grave he had tried to drown his heart in._

 

“… _I can’t again….I have....”_

 

_Mathews had him pressed against the wall, kissing trails of fire down his neck. John moaned and thrust his hips forward._

 

“ _I still need you. Before we die in this hell hole I_ _ **need you**_ _.” Mathews was growling softly. “I want you to fuck the roof of my mouth raw. I want you to cum down my throat. I want to spread your pretty little arse and thrust my cock into you until you cum.”_

 

_Matthews was a blur, and John was kneeling before the man tall and pale, gripping the zip of his pants with his teeth. Oh God he wanted this, all silk and sin in the dark of his room. He would taste him, he would swallow him whole._

 

“ _Oh dear Lover-boy. Tsk Tsk.” And John froze at the sound of rust and honey, the crack of a metal grate over ice._

 

“ _Ripping his clothes off in a darkened swimming pool. People might talk.”_

 

_Moriarty was standing there, standing there watching as John blew Sherlock with reckless abandon by the pool. Standing there with a gun pointed towards John’s heart._

 

“ _Mary says hi.”_

 

_And he pulled the trigger._

 

John awoke screaming.

 

          Fragments of this nightmare had been true. And somehow that made it even worse.

 

          “John.” Something thumped outside John’s door. Sherlock burst in with frantic eyes.

 

          “Christ, what the hell were you doing outside my room?!” John shrieked, his voice raw. He hadn’t spoken in his sleep had he?

 

          Sherlock looked stricken. “You screamed Moriarty.”

 

          John let his head fall, face burning with shame. “Ah. Ta then.”

 

          Sherlock nodded once before disappearing.

 

          John buried his face in his pillow and gave a dry sob. Mary, Matthews, parts of his life he wished would stay buried.

 

          He heaved himself back up as he heard the return of Sherlock’s familiar tread on the stairs. The detective returned, stepping into the room cradling what appeared to be an orchid in the gloom.

 

          “A flower?” John smelled the sickle sweet fragrance of rotting honey suckle.

 

          Sherlock snorted. “An air freshener.”

 

          “Hardly fresh.” John gagged at the saccharine sweetness.

 

          “It’s infused with melatonin. I’ve been working on it for the past few days.” Sherlock faltered, as if unsure of what to say. “It should help you sleep.”

 

          “For me?” John looked up, smiling in the gloom. Trying to ignore that familiar ache, the spread of warmth all through his body as his skin prickled and flushed.

 

          Nothing good could come of this.

 

          “Thank you.”

 

          Nothing good ever did.

 


	15. River In Your Mouth, Lies in Your Waters

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After Baskerville a string of seemingly unrelated beheadings draw Sherlock and John into a complex case of narcotics and intrigue.
> 
> Actions have consequences, and John’s PTSD comes to a head as the ghosts of both their pasts echo with the demons of the case. For Sherlock, history must be reconciled before the present can be solved.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to everyone who has actually stuck with this fic. This year has been tough stuff and it really means the world to me that people are still patiently reading and waiting even through the gaps. You guys have really been amazing and I cannot thank you enough for your comments and messages on my tumblr. As always please please comment (I love hearing from you) and keep being incredible! <3

**Chapter 15**

 

 _Hold it in love_  
_The river in your mouth is pouring out_  
 _Water takes the_  
 _Shape of all that it surrounds_

_Ben Howard, “River's in Your Mouth”_

 

 

Sherlock should feel guilty.

 

Not that he actually did.

 

He just knew he _should_.

 

John, loveable infuriating excruciating detestable John was sitting in his favorite arm chair pouring over Isobella Roberts worthless hard drive.

 

Sherlock stood frozen over the breakfast table’s latest experiment, still as a statue and unable to work. He wanted to walk across the room and take the hard drive and smash it, crush and crumble it into bits for being cradled by John’s soft hands, fine lines and blue veins under a downy of blonde and freckles. John. John John John and he was over and done with.

 

Sherlock hated Isobella Roberts. Hated a dead women for being interesting enough that John had poured over her files, read her correspondents, flipped through her pictures. If Sherlock could have he would have killed her himself, wrapped his fingers around her pretty throat a squeezed. Squeezed and constricted the way Sherlock’s lungs closed and heart shuttered at the thought of anyone, anything so much as _touching_ John.

 

And Sherlock hated him.

 

He hated the doctor. Hated the hot grate inside his mind, the coals burning in his loins, the scratch and scrape of every callus over every nerve when the doctor brushed by. He wanted to kill John, smite him out of his life with the certainly that it would surely kill himself but for one last moment Sherlock might have it back, his precious clarity. His mind. Because Sherlock despised John now with every ounce of his being, loathed him. Loved him. Raged at him. Incredulous that a tired lined veteran in a dowdy bathrobe reduced Sherlock to this. _THIS._

 

Sherlock gripped a beaker and felt his throat close up, as if he was having an allergic reaction to sentiment itself.

 

Possible.

 

This was fear, he realized. Fear and hatred in its truest form, that someone could strip so much from him unaware. That someone could decimate his entire being and then read the paper, oblivious to the smoldering ash of want and denial sparked in flesh and anguish.

 

Sherlock loved. And through that love he _hated_.

 

“Find anything?” It wasn’t really a question. There was nothing to find.

 

John tilted is head back and crinkled eyes in a fold of lines and teeth. Bared his teeth. Smiling, always smiling.

 

“Not yet.” The doctor chuckled. “She’s got the best sodding photo albums though. Some of her friends are quite the lookers.”

 

Sherlock clutched the beaker hard enough to crack, felt the bitterness spread like poison through his flesh.

 

“If you aren’t going to work busy yourself with the files.” Sherlock snapped.

 

He no longer felt guilty about not feeling guilty.

 

Sherlock stared at the experiment before him.

 

“No need to get huffy, diva.” Sherlock could almost hear John rolling his eyes. “You never know what people leave behind on these things.”

 

Sherlock sneered. “I firmly doubt anyone whose technical aptitude includes pecking at the keyboard with single fingers and calling hard drives _things_ is going to find a lead.”

 

“I don’t get it” John looked up from the laptop and threw up one hand. “How can you be _positive_ there’s nothing useful on her external hard drive?!”

 

“Because they _left it_!” Sherlock snapped with irritation. “Whatever she was working on that they killed her for they took it and destroyed it! She didn’t even keep her work on there! Her photo depository of nights at the pub with slutty friends Is . Not . Useful.”

 

“Well I’m sorry people can’t just store evidence in” John lifted his hands and made air quotes, “ _imaginary_ air space that a bloke can pull up for clues. For now racy pub pics are all we’ve got!”

 

“Obviously,” Sherlock suddenly straightened up. “Obviously y-wait wait WAIT John I’m an idiot!”

 

“Sorry now what?” John's mouth popped open in a perfect look of pure shock.

 

“More specifically _you_ are an idiot but your ignorance is incredibly illuminating!” Sherlock was spinning now, dancing around the room high on the taste of brilliance.

 

“Not this again.” John frowned and folded his arms in indignation. “Can’t you just pay me a bloody compliment?”

 

Sherlock spun in front of the doctor, fire in his eyes as he gripped the soft terrycloth of John’s robe.

 

“Hardly” Sherlock gasped, “Insincere flattery underplays the usefulness of your meager mind.”

 

“Gee, thanks.” John huffed. “Wouldn’t want _my_ ego to get too big now. Not enough space for the both of us. Ta!”

 

“Obvious.” Sherlock murmured in a feverish voice. “Her Google drive John, her _Google drive!_ ”

 

“Her what?”

 

“Exactly!” Sherlock released John, throwing his hands up in the air and spinning once more. “Precisely.”

 

John snapped the laptop back open. “I’ll start paying attention when you start making sense again.”

 

“Don’t you see?” Sherlock whirled back around and gripped John’s good shoulder a second time. “Don’t you see? No of course you don’t you clever dull thing! _You_ don’t get it so neither do _they_!”

 

“Thanks for lumping me in with brain dead thieves and bloody murders. Appreciate it.”

 

Sherlock leaned closer so their faces were almost touching, positively panting. “Her _Google drive,_ John. The ‘imaginary’ space to store her work on that no one thought to erase.”

 

John looked up and swallowed, slowly and audibly.

 

Sherlock suddenly realized their proximity, the precious air they shared between them like a living thing, curling around the thin spaces between their flushed faces. He could inhale John’s breath like a caress.

 

His heart constricted. This feeling, that burned through his flesh like acid, corroding his will and pooling in his groin, this detestable feeling Sherlock had been mistaking for irritability or fatigue or any number of things for all these weeks. Had how Sherlock misinterpreted _this_?!

 

Desire.

 

John licked his lips, his eyes shuttering downwards.

 

Sherlock frowned. The doctor’s pulse was elevated, frantic like a humming bird heart. Surely he didn’t…

 

The thought was excruciating. The idea that John might desire as equally painful and infinitely more terrifying than the thought he didn’t. John surely, absolutely, positively didn't want this because _who would_? Who would embrace this feeling of free fall, this agony of wanting.

 

John’s right hand spasmed.

 

Sherlock ripped himself away as if burned.

 

“Of course you don’t get it.” Sherlock snarled, hating John all over again. “Look she was a freelance journalist – her email was through Google business. Not Outlook, too expensive when not through the company. Gmail, don't you see?”

 

John licked his lips and looked up slowly.

 

Too Slow.

 

“Oh for the love of-” Sherlock huffed. “Give me her email address!”

 

Sherlock flounced over to the breakfast table, popping out his own laptop and clearing a space next to the Bunsen burner.

 

John followed, pale and shaky. His breath still trembling.

 

Probably shaken by Sherlock’s invasion of his personal space.

 

The thought tore like a rusty nail into exposed flesh.

 

“Alright, so her Google hive then?”

 

“Drive John.” Sherlock waited as the page loaded with lines of text. “Thought so! See? She used it to back up her work online through her Gmail account. See? They erased her emails but the Google drive is separate. It is full of her drafts and research. It’s fairly new cloud technology, something they wouldn’t have thought to check and erase.”

 

“Brilliant.” John grinned in a way that made Sherlock’s heart shatter. The doctor placed on warm hand on Sherlock and leaned over his shoulder. “What was she working on then?”

 

“If you will let me read I will tell you!” Sherlock snapped, shaking John’s hand away. He didn’t want the contact.

 

“Drug cartels,” Sherlock snorted his eyes darting through the documents as he rapidly pulled up files, “we already knew that. Tax evasion at an agricultural chemical facility and oh, OH!”

 

“What?” John leaned in again, oblivious to Sherlock’s squirming.

 

“Look at the pattern of her articles.” Sherlock pulled up a map. She was working on a piece featuring the fluid nature of these drug cartels in London and their vast networks and revenue stream right?”

 

“Okay.” John looked puzzled and Sherlock hadn’t even started.

 

“Then she had another separate piece concerning the Agricultural company AgriSA in York and how they might be guilty of major tax evasion and embezzlement. Alright now listen, AgriSA has a Syrian non profit branch that worked on digging wells during the past six year Syrian drought. The entire branch has relocated to York during the civil war and refocused on refugees from the war, and several of their lawyers are implicated in her tax evasion accusation. Right?”

 

“You are already over my head.” John frowned.

 

“The murder victim’s, the beheaded men and women have all been drug dealers or…?”

 

“Lebanese posing as Syrian refugees!”

 

“Right. Now look at the last article. It was downloaded two days before she was killed and was wasn’t written by her.” Sherlock scrolled through the document and frowned. “It is about Shiite terrorist cells in York sending funds to the Syrian fighter groups supporting Assad’s regime.”

 

“It was written by Sakim Zafrani.” Sherlock pulled his chair back and tapped his fingers against his skull. “Where have I heard that name before?”

 

“FINALLY!” John shouted, “I know something!”

 

Sherlock frowned. “No need to gloat like a child.”

 

“Oh because _I_ am the childish one around here.” John rolled his eyes. “Now move.”

 

Leaning over Sherlock the doctor quickly pulled up Google and typed in Sakim Zafrani.

 

The first page was an obituary.

 

“He was a rather well known Pakistani terrorism journalist.” John grinned like a school boy. “I remember because he was murdered the same week Isabella was, three days before if I remember correctly.”

 

“Brilliant!” Sherlock jumped up, his hands tugging at his hair. “Don’t you see? No of course you don’t! We are dealing with a narco-terrorist cell in London John!”

 

“Narco terrorism?” John shuddered, “Like the Taliban and the afghan opium trade.”

 

“Exactly like that.” Sherlock clasped an arm around John’s good shoulder and began pacing, dragging the doctor with him. “Terrorist movements require funds and secrecy, drug trafficking is the perfect source of revenue that is dealt in cash and hidden from government records. Zafrani was murdered for his work, and Isabella was murdered for the connections she might draw between his work and hers.”

 

“You think Zafrani sent her this article to edit?”

 

“I think he sent her this article to collaborate on.” Sherlock chortled with glee. “It was never published, but neither were all her others here. She was waiting, gathering evidence and building up to something big. I bet she contacted him, a well known terrorism expert to confide in and he sent her this.”

 

“And both were murdered for it.”

 

“Yes.” Sherlock grinned.

 

“But how is the agricultural firm involved? Tax evasion?”

 

“AgriSA is probably funneling money to their Syrian refugee branch and claiming higher deductibles than they really need or…”

 

“Or what?”

 

“There several things you can make with the ingredients from agricultural chemicals.

 

John sighed, “And one of them is drugs.”

 

“Exactly.” Sherlock suddenly snarled. “ _Mycroft_.”

 

“He knows?”

 

“He’s been trying to keep me from this case from the beginning.”

 

“So now what?”

 

“Now,” Sherlock reached for his great coat, “We go to York.”

 

****

 

Sherlock didn’t need long to pack his bag.

 

John, loveable predictable creature that he was already had one packed. Sherlock had pulled the doctor along on enough last minute excursions that he was always prepared. A duffle bag containing several jumpers and a clean pair of pants and slacks sat in John’s closet, waiting.

 

Sherlock could not prepackage his bags. He needed forethought, disguises.

 

In this instance he might possibly need something else entirely.

 

Sherlock frowned and looked around his bedroom.

 

He could fake ID to get in the agricultural facility, but the information he needed would be taking place in back alley’s and closed groups.

 

A narco-terrorist cell. Not the sort to be chatting up the rest of the firm with their activities.

 

There were two ways to infiltrate a narco-terrorist cell without the tedium of months of surveillance and online hacking.

 

As a terrorist, or as a drug dealer.

 

Passing as a Syrian refugee was out.

 

Sherlock frowned.

 

John was not going to like this.

 

In fact, John would _hate_ this.

 

The more important question was what would Sherlock attempt to sell?

 

Sherlock let his gaze fall on the clutter of beakers John had shoved in his room earlier (uncontaminated eating space, he had yelled). Sherlock had been experimenting on the Secobarbital all week trying to make a knock out gas. John had bought the excuse that Sherlock had been cooking (and failing) with surprising ease. As if Sherlock would be a horrible cook! Cooking was pure science.

 

Two crusted pots held his results. John had thought Sherock had binned the ruined cookware.

 

Instead he had perfected a minor version.

 

The gas worked perfectly, tested first on himself and then John. Not potent enough to instantly incapacitate the target, but enough to seriously inebriate them. John fell asleep within minutes of its dispersal at night and seemed to suffer no further nightmares.

 

Sherlock could easily take the remaining supply of Secobarbital and fashion some sort of narcotic to sell, a heavy street sedative from the barbiturate category.

 

But he would have to test it first.

 

He might need some of John’s coedine….

 

Sherlock narrowed his eyes and swiftly exited the bedroom.

 

“John?”

 

John was not in the kitchen.

 

“John?”

 

He was also not in the living room.

 

“John!” Sherlock was exasperated now, after all he was having to go upstairs.

 

“Yes?” The doctor peeked his head outside of his bedroom, looking down at the peeved detective on the stairs bellow.

 

“You can quit indexing your oatmeal jumpers by hue.” Sherlock huffed and turned smartly back around. “We leave three days from now. I will be in my bedroom finishing preparations. Do _**not**_ disturb me until then.”

 

John rolled his eyes and cleared his throat. “Because I was being such a nuisance just now.”

 

“You were.”

 

Sherlock suppressed the urge to smile.


	16. What the Water Gave Me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After Baskerville a string of seemingly unrelated beheadings draw Sherlock and John into a complex case of narcotics and intrigue.
> 
> Actions have consequences, and John’s PTSD comes to a head as the ghosts of both their pasts echo with the demons of the case. For Sherlock, history must be reconciled before the present can be solved.

 

**Chapter 16**

 

 _Drying up in conversation, you will be the one who cannot talk_  
_All your insides fall to pieces, you just sit there wishing you could still make love_  
 _They're the ones who'll hate you when you think you've got the world_  
 _all sussed out_  
 _They're the ones who'll spit at you, you will be the one screaming out_

_Radiohead ‘High and Dry’_

 

Sherlock was acting strange.

 

Not just his normal weirdness, but strange.

 

Which of course meant that John had the good sense (or misfortune) to know to be suspicious. Experience was a cruel mistress.

 

John shifted in his train car seat and spared Sherlock a sideways glance.

 

Sherlock sat, rumpled and pale, grimacing at every passer by with bleary red eyes. Which was in and of itself not unusual. Sherlock _was_ the snarling anti-social sort who never really slept.

 

This morning had been an entirely different matter.

 

Sherlock had been impossible to get up. The man was downright disoriented for the first hour and furious for the next. John had barely made it to the Oyster station alive.

 

Now he was trapped in a train car sitting next to the loon. Trapped was an inadequate word at best. John had awoken in the morning hot and yearning, feverish with a dream that left the taste of salt and sweat in his mouth and an ache in his loins. Now he was crammed in a train car, the sweet press of Sherlock’s lean thigh against his own, the answer to so many questions concerning John’s sexuality lately that it was best left untouched.

 

John’s day was apparently determined not to go well.

 

The attendant pushed her cart by with a sharp clack. Sherlock looked up with a startled hiss.

 

“Cooked breakfast?” The attendant was a short curvy brunette, pleasantly plump, and offering a cellophane wrapped meal with one immaculately manicured hand. Salvation in the female form. John leaned forward like a hungry man, his eyes crinkling in that way that women always found disarmingly charming.

 

Sherlock looked appalled at the gesture. “Coffee. Black two sugars.”

 

The woman nodded her head and turned to John with a bright smile. “And you?”

 

John cleared his throat and flashed a brilliant grin. Maybe his day was looking up after all.

 

Sherlock was suddenly closer, leaning out between John and the attendant with his hand on John’s knee. “Coffee, black.”

 

Sherlock looked ready to rip the poor woman’s throat out.

 

John frowned and tried to move his knee. Sherlock’s iron grip remained.

 

The attendant turned bright pink, poured their coffee and hurried off.

 

“Sherlock,” John huffed. It was entirely too early for whatever _this_ was. He didn’t need Sherlock’s reprimands for distractions during a case _._ “I might have wanted some breakfast you know.”

 

“No,” Sherlock growled, his hand still forming a death grip around John’s knee. “You didn’t. And food slows down your thinking.”

 

“Food slows down _your_ thinking.” John interjected, ignoring the hot press of Sherlock’s hand, the rub of corduroy against his prickled leg. “My stomach and brain are right chummy.”

 

“The food is awful and you would have complained.” Sherlock closed his eyes and leaned his head back against the seat, hand still warmly encased around John’s knee. Warm, hot, sweet and sin and so much that was best left _alone_. “Better we skip all the nonsense. Drink your coffee.”

 

John leaned back against his seat.

 

Sherlock didn’t move.

 

His hand was still _right there_.

 

Panic welled like black river water, threatening to submerge him under in the muck and weeds. John cleared his throat meaningfully and tried to shift his knee.

 

Sherlock’s hand stayed, shifting further up John’s leg with the movement. The slide of fabric leaving a trail of fire, scalding John with the kiss of something close and forbidden.

 

John’s soft cock gave a sudden twitch.

 

 _No_ ….

 

It gave a second twitch.

 

John was now suddenly aware of the warmth on his mid-thigh in a very _different_ way. He could feel himself slowly hardening, that familiar itch that seemed to burn through him like a sweet fever returning, pooling in his groin and arching up his spine in the burst of a solar flare.

 

John lunged forward with a startled grunt, feeling Sherlock’s hand drop from his thigh, caressing the doctor in mid-descent.

 

John squatted on the floor of the train car, his back to the detective, his cock now half-hard and starting to strain against his trousers.

 

Sherlock cracked one eye open and gave an irritated snarl. “What are you doing?”

 

John cleared his throat. He couldn’t stand up sporting an erection. He maintained his crouch panic choking him now, thick and dark bubbling up his chest to pull him under. What _was_ he doing?

 

“Magazines!” John practically shouted with a strangled crack. Christ save him from _this._ “Magazines. Yes. Need something to read. Want one?”

 

John fished around in the mesh bin located beneath the back of the train seats before him. Sure enough, there were handfuls of travel magazines picturing various exotic locations. He snatched four of the things, the slick press of glossy laminate slipping against his hot palms.

 

“No.” Sherlock sounded disgusted.

 

John focused on that disgust. The sound of school boys, the ugly slur of _poof_ in a damp playground as John gripped the monkey bars, the cool bite of the steel as unfamiliar as the kicks the boys hurled at the slender ginger kid crouched against the fence. The sound of his father’s voice late at night, thundering against his mother’s slurs, that crack when he spat “well at least my _son_ is a straight _man_ ”. Because it was okay for his twin Harry, expected that the wild girl with purple streaks and baggy pants would never snag a beau, would pierce her ears in the middle school bathroom and snog Cindy McMillian against the closed doors of his parent’s bedroom. Harry was the wild one, of course she would give into the pulsing blood of these secret thoughts, these dark secretive hands in the back of the rugby field.

 

“Of course.” John gave a strangled cry. “Not really your type of mag.”

 

Because it was fine for Harry, yes, but not _John_. Straight laced john, doctor john, army john, the pinnacle of parent’s pride who wanted a nuclear family and would give them grandchildren.

 

“I'm not gay.” John hissed beneath his breath, a lifetime of reflex spilling from his lips.

 

“John?” Sherlock sounded foreign.

 

“Fine!” John cleared his throat and gasped. “Said ' _it's not okay'_. Can’t find anything worth bloody reading.”

 

Because so many things, so many whispers and words and perceptions were wrapped up in John, this image of steady hands and a quick smile, three continent Watson who was good at Rugby and wanted a _family. Normalcy._ Christ this wasn’t him, this dark urge to snog and lick and ride this slick monster of an urge all the way to the other side.

 

“Of course.” Sherlock sounded irritated and more than a tad bit bored. “What did you expect?”

 

 _What_ _ **did**_ _John expect?_ To snog his bloody flat mate the way he had pressed Matthews and countless others in the backs of lockers and doors. Encounters that left him feeling wild and foreign, encounters that always inevitably ruined everything.

 

_Mary._

 

John grunted, feeling his erection go limp at the thought of _that._ What he had done to that girl, all open and loving, her eyes red rimmed when he finally came home for Afghanistan, that accusing stare because she _knew._

 

John gripped a magazine, feeling his sweat slide hot and slick against the glossy laminate as he flipped it open.

 

_Visit Ireland’s Black Beaches._

 

The words were printed in bold, jarring and taunting.

 

John tossed the magazine aside and stood up.

 

“What is it?” Sherlock opened his eyes and regarded John with one of his ‘looks’.

 

“What, you mean you can’t deduce it outright?” John snapped on edge. He needed to calm down.

 

Sherlock frowned, clasping his hands together and leaning forward in his seat.

 

“I hate the beach!” John blurted out returning to his seat. He realized Sherlock deducing him was the _last_ thing he wanted. “After Afghanistan. Sand you know. Christ someone is noisy this morning.”

 

“Ah,” Sherlock wrinkled his face in distaste. “Except no. Why?”

 

“You are asking?” John looked at Sherlock in pure shock. “You aren’t going to ‘deduce’ the obvious.”

 

The detective closed his eyes. “I have a headache”

 

“And you want to talk?”

 

“Fine.” Sherlock snapped. “Never mind!”

 

John felt like his stomach had dropped out. Sherlock. Not deducing. Making small talk. Asking inane questions.

 

What was going on?

 

John was clearly losing his mind.

 

******

 

They arrived in York around lunch time.

 

John had always liked York. The sprawling metropolis of old in new. He remembered when he had visited as a boy, his mother possibly looking to transfer hospitals in the burgeoning medical sector. He remembered tracing the ancient walls of the city, wondering at the change in stone from Roman to Medieval, from Barbarian to Brit, the layers checkered like some fantastical quilt of mortar and rock.

 

Sherlock was in no mood to sight-see. He staggered off the train in the central station, ignoring the twist of iron and glass in the vaulted canopy above. John smarted for the architecture, feeling Sherlock had slighted some unspoken protocol of aesthetic appreciation.

 

That is, until Sherlock excused himself to the public loo and proceeded to hurl noisily in a nearby stall.

 

“Sherlock?” John started.

 

“Bad coffee.” Sherlock snapped, waving the doctor away.

 

An argument and a smarting ego later, John and the worst patient in London transferred to another train.

 

They took the rail to the outskirts of the city, the winding spaghetti sprawl of railways ending among masses of 19th century textile manufacturing plants overlooking the rolling hills and the hint of countryside.

 

Sherlock shivered violently the entire ride.

 

The detective had booked them a bed and breakfast a bit further out, taking a rental car (Mycroft’s card) to a small-refurnished tutor house built from patchwork stone. Roses and butterfly bushes lined the walk and creeping jenny and arajuga skirted the flag stones.

 

John found the entire scene quintessentially British and utterly charming.

 

Sherlock feverish, pale and sweaty in the backseat of the rental car, denounced the scene as cloying.

 

“Inane.” He cried from the back of the car, teeth chattering like it was winter.

 

John hauled the luggage out and preemptively called it a day, surprised when Sherlock acquiesced. Surprised up until the man bent over and then proceed to hurl in the rose bushes.

 

“Food poisoning?” John frowned, mopping the detective’s brow.

 

“Wrong.” Sherlock spat out stomach bile. “I haven’t eaten in three days.”

 

“Well we are certainly fixing that.” John draped an arm across the detective and propped him up on his shoulder. “Come on, off to bed with you.”

 

“Not sleepy.” Sherlock shivered.

 

“You’re feverish and have flu symptoms. No arguing.”

 

John hauled Sherlock in the bed and breakfast, tolerating the attendant just long enough to give instructions about their luggage and grab a room key.

 

Sherlock was downright limp by the time they made it up the stairs, his arms trailing down like wet noodles.

 

“Ima fin” He mumbled, managing to find the strength to elbow John in the ribs.

 

John shrugged him out of his greatcoat before the detective collapsed face first, shoes and all, on the nearest twin bed.

 

“John.”

 

The doctor was fiddling with the laces of one of Sherlock’s shoes.

 

“Why do you hate the beach?”

 

“Sherlock,” John started, the bile rising unbidden in his throat. “It’s not important.”

 

“It _is.”_ Sherlock snapped, twisting up from the bed.

 

“Lie down, you have a fever,” John felt Sherlock’s forehead. “A high one”

 

“Don’t feel like sharing?” The detective hissed. “Too many memories of _sand_.”

 

“It involves a broken engagement.” John snapped. “My fault. The beach was where we were supposed to honeymoon.”

 

“Wrong.” Sherlock slurred. “You were telling the partial truth. It involves something dark. Emotional. After you came back from Afghanistan. That time before me.”

 

John froze.

 

“How did you-”

 

“-simple deduction by the-”

 

“-never mind. Shut up. Christ you’re fever is high.”

 

Sherlock suddenly sat up, gripping John’s good shoulder and pulling him forward. “John. _John.”_

 

“Sherlock.” John took the voice he would use to reprimand a small child.

 

“I’m glad.” Sherlock slumped forward, his head bent down against John’s chest. “I’m glad you didn’t do it. ”

 

John froze.

 

“It was…” His voice split open like a melon. “It was just a fleeting notion.”

 

Sherlock shook his head.

 

“The ocean is wonderful.” He slurred. “The cradle of life. But I would hate it.”

 

Sherlock looked up, eyes feverish and bright, their faces almost touching.

 

“I would hate it John.”

 

John swallowed, bringing his arms up to push the detective back down on the bed.

 

“I would hate anything that took you from me.”

 

 

*****

 

John lay awake that night.

 

Remembering.

 

He had been at the beach when he came back from Afghanistan. John had come back a cripple, Mary had broken off their engagement, and his Rugby mates had treated him to a bachelor’s weekend where they were supposed to honeymoon.

 

Like there was something to celebrate.

 

They had gone out to the beach late at night, drinking and howling in the sand, crashing through dunes and breaking bits of shell underfoot. When his mates were thoroughly smashed John had excused himself, hobbling in the surf with the aid of a beach umbrella until he was finally in the water.

 

It was there it happened.

 

John stood, waist deep in inky black water, feeling the tug of the tide as the surf swirled and foamed its gaping mouth around him. The whole ocean stretched before him, black and shining like a giant oil spill, the gleam of the half moon leaving a silver road before him on the shimmering water.

 

John was overcome with the urge to follow that silver road.

 

To wade out until the black waters embraced him with a salty kiss. Until he was swaddled in kelp and surf, until his body was carried far away.

 

And John had cried. Had cried something drunken and awful in the ocean, for in that moment, smelling of brine and failure, that silver horizon seemed like the only option before him. The only road worth taking.

 

John had taken two steps, feeling sand swirl around his toes as the pull of the tide whispered unbidden promises, had taken two steps into the darkness.

 

And he had stopped.

 

Uncertain.

 

He was a child, standing, waiting for the day he could feel decent again. Laughing at dreams of dying, crying that they weren’t real, smiling at this terrible slicing ache, the fear that the best was long behind him and the worst was yet to come.

 

His mates came splashing in the water, unaware what John was contemplating.

 

Unaware what the surf and salt had promised.

 

Of course Sherlock knew. _Of course_ _ **he**_ _would know._

 

Sherlock had said he would hate the ocean for John. Would hate anything that tried to take him.

 

John turned, staring into the darkness at where his feverish flat mate lay sprawled and snoring across the room.

 

John didn’t want Sherlock to hate the ocean.

 

Sherlock twisted in his sleep, giving a soft snorting sound.

 

John squeezed his eyes shut and gasped.

 

He didn’t want Sherlock to hate.

 

God help him.

 

He didn’t know what he wanted anymore.

 

 

~~~~~

 

 

_Major James Sholto stood in the middle of the hospital washroom, disfigured and burnt, his face a swollen cluster of boils and grief._

 

“ _Captain John Hamish Watson you are to be transferred to the 2 nd Medical regiment in Lashkar Gah.”_

 

_Dead crows dropped from the ceiling like drops of dark paint, forming a black halo on the floor around Sholto. They hit the laminent floor like wet sandbags, the heavy slap of tender flesh and bone._

 

_There would be a military hearing for all the dead crows._

 

_Of course John was being transferred out._

 

“ _You will leave the Hazar Juft Comprehensive Health Clinic and depart from Gamsir in exactly one week.”_

 

_John looked up from the washing station sink, the water's tap dark, dark red, it's stain spreading across John's sleeves as he scrubbed. The hospital smelt of disinfectant and fever, of sweat and furtive need._

 

_His need._

 

_He had to wash it out._

 

“ _I will no longer be your commanding Officer.” Sholto's eye's narrowed, blisters on his forehead weeping fluid. “Your skills will be needed in Lashkar Gah.”_

 

_John turned to object, his guilty lips thick and swollen, his trousers haphazardly buttoned._

 

“ _We all harvest regrets in war. Leave your demon's in the city that birthed them.” Sholto's eyes grew soft. “Go call your fiance.”_

 

_John faltered._

 

_He would not feel conflicted about leaving the hospital._

 

_He would not long to stay._

 

“ _Duty calls! Your country needs you!” Matthew's voice rang out sharp and sardonic from the shadows. “Operation Panther's claw is about to start. Big Deal. Hush hush.”_

 

“ _Operation Panther's Claw?” John tested the words on his tongue and found them foreign._

 

“ _Remember,” Sholto frowned and shook his head at John. “Only psychics and spies can tell the future.”_

 

_John took a step towards Matthew's voice only to feel Sholto's fist clench round his arm like a brand, like the vice that held his heart._

 

“ _Only psychics and spies can tell the future.” Sholto repeated, his eyes pale chips of ice._

 

_The hospital windows grew grey and narrow, the glass panes rattling like a dying furnace. The crows kept falling dead from the ceiling._

 

“ _And psychics don't exist.” Sholto hissed, blood running down his cheeks._

 

_John took another step forward._

 

_Matthews was stretched out in white linen, meticulously sorting cards on his hospital bed, clean bandages covering the fresh knife wounds on his ribs and arm. He looked up as John stepped free of Sholto and gave a wolfish grin, all teeth and secrets._

 

_Water began to leak beneath the windows and doors._

 

“ _There is no trickery in knowing. Only rank.” Mathews laid a king of spades face up and whistled sharply. “Spades trumps hearts. They're planning on taking back Nad Ali. Don't worry though.”_

 

_Matthews looked up as water began too pool around the bed, around John's ankles._

 

“ _I won't leave you.”_

 

_John felt his ribs snap, the loud crack of his sternum breaking, the sudden roar as the Helmand River poured in the room. Washing Sholto and Matthews away in a swirl of foam and churning water._

 

_And murky brown water stretched as far as the eye could see, an channel of riptides and bodies, of swirling currents and drowned expectations. Only Sholto's dead crows remained, floating to the surface in clumps like slick black fish eggs._

 

_And John screamed._

 

_Screamed as his surroundings bled together. Screamed as the water receded and ghosts and shadows took the shape of Lashkar Gah._

 

_Screamed at images of patrol with hardened men as he took aim. Screamed at fragments of bunkers and bedsits, shrill laughter and jagged humor in empty ears and hollow mess-halls._

 

_Screamed until he was finally empty._

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi Everyone!
> 
> Thank you again everyone who has stuck with this story. I'm starting to get a better feel on my writing groove and you can expect updates about once a month (I know, WIP are the worst). Thank you for all your support and please leave comments - they make me hungry to write more! You can also always contact me on my tumblr http://lovelylaceandlilac.tumblr.com/ - my ask box is always open. :)


	17. Midnight in the Garden

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After Baskerville a string of seemingly unrelated beheadings draw Sherlock and John into a complex case of narcotics and intrigue.
> 
> Actions have consequences, and John’s PTSD comes to a head as the ghosts of both their pasts echo with the demons of the case. For Sherlock, history must be reconciled before the present can be solved.

**Chapter 17**

 

 _In dreams I have watched it spin_ **  
** Seen the violent crack of atoms where all light comes In **  
** In dreams I have seen aesops kin **  
** Just the carcass of a man now alone inside his skin

~Ben Howard, “In Dreams”

 

 

“Our technical division helps agricultural firms handle their accounting and record keeping, particularly in the biochemical field.”

 

Sherlock felt his stomach roll, heave with the whiff of bile cloying the back of his throat. The woman had a face like rice pudding, uneven pores bulging, her dimples hidden behind pale sickly folds of jiggling skin.

 

Five more minutes.

 

_Focus._

 

 _“_ We would start you out doing live support for clients and then we would move you into project management for the implementation of our AGRIeen product which offers listing services and management portals for managing chemical orders online and entering maintenance requests.”

 

French manicure, real nails, no chips well maintained. Inexpensive suit, tweed, well worn. Three moles on her neck that looked like Tony Blair’s profile. Worked hard, saved money for the little luxuries.

 

 _Clearly not including Lasik mole removal_.

 

“Any relational database experience you have, building queries and stuff, will carry over nicely. You don’t have to do much programing design, but you need to be able to look at something and tell if it's jacked and needs to go to dev or creative services to resolve.”

 

Didn’t floss this morning, had coffee by the discoloration on the plaque. Newspaper ink on her right thumb and tiny black dots in her teeth.

 

_Poppy seed muffin or bagel?_

 

Ugh, the thought of either brought a fresh wave of nausea.

 

“You said were fluent in SQL, Java, Perl, and html correct?”

 

Sherlock looked up.

 

_Crumbs on the lapel. Definitely muffin._

 

And hurled in the nearby bin.

 

“Oh my goodness! Are you alright?”

 

Sherlock leaned his head on his plaid sweater clad arm and checked his watch. The room heaved like the bow of a ship.

 

3:17 pm.

 

Fifteen minutes since the interview had started.

 

_Good enough!_

 

“I’m fine. Upon further consideration Ms.” Sherlock looked up from the waste bin and squinted at her name tag “Powel, I do not think we agree with each other’s constitution.”

 

Sherlock would have been flashed her a sardonic grin at the pun, had he not needed to hurl into the bin again.

 

“Oh” was all the woman could mummer over the sounds of the detective emptying his stomach.

 

“Yes, unfortunately.” Sherlock braced his hands on his knees and slowly stood. “Do you have a breath mint?”

 

~~~~

 

John was at the end of the hall in a waiting area chair glowering at the laptop before him. His lips curled and chin jut out in mass of blonde stubble from the previous afternoon. He was picturesque in his abject frustration, like a scientist growling at a disappointing petri dish.

 

Sherlock grinned.

 

No.

 

_Focus._

 

A simple key gen had gained him access to AgriSA’s Wi-Fi. A resume attachment encrypted with a keystroke logger gave him access to the database. Fifteen minutes with John running his program in the lobby should have given him the profile and background of every employee.

 

“Did you get it?” Sherlock brushed his fingers against John’s jumper, feeling the sharp trill of static electricity course along his skin.

 

John, loveable wonderful John, looked up and frowned, the seventeen intersecting lines (he had counted) on his forehead deepening with displeasure. He opened his bag and fished out a bottle of water and a paracetamol with calloused hands. Sherlock took them gingerly, savoring the brush of skin as he took the pill.

 

He took it with a quick swig, coughed twice, and forced his grin down.

 

No.

 

_Focus._

 

“Did you get it?”

 

“I don’t bloody know.” John snorted in disgust. “What does this bouncing bloody pinwheel mean?”

 

Sherlock gingerly leaned over the frustrated doctor. John smelled of fabric softener and tea. Lovely. “Its green. Download complete. We are good.”

 

“We can leave?” John looked up and then grimaced. “Christ Sherlock your breath is _awful_ …you were sick again, weren’t you?”

 

“I’m fine!” He wasn’t. Sherlock snapped the laptop shut and tucked it into his leather messenger bag, ignoring those seventeen intersecting lines deepening in displeasure. “We have 15 minutes before security knows we’ve hacked in. Let’s go.”

 

“Sure thing boss nerd.” John gave Sherlock a once over. “You look horrible.”

 

“This _is_ your jumper you know.” Sherlock made a sweeping gesture up from his converse shoes and jeans to his mussed hair and thick oversized glasses. He felt uncomfortable, itching in this second skin of corduroy and flannel. “Its not my fault you share tastes with hipster programmers.”

 

“I _never_ wear jeans that tight.” John trailed behind Sherlock in the office corridor “and what on earth is a ‘hipster’?”

 

“Cretans with egos that rival Mycroft’s.” The words tasted funny and thick. Sherlock sped up his pace. “Twelve minutes, we need to hurry.”

 

“You are one to talk about egos.” John gave a meaningful cough. “And I meant it earlier. You look right sick again.”

 

Sherlock felt sick.

 

Felt like someone had taken a vice grip to his skull and was slowly squeezing the grey matter out. His snarky t-shirt was soaked and his errant curls clung damply to the back of his neck. Sherlock felt like his body would absorb them, his hair would sink into the flesh of his skull, slowly winding and tightening the burning pressure in his mind.

 

His fever was coming back.

 

“If I look sick its because I am wearing this ill fitting monstrosity.” Sherlock nodded at the security guard at the front desk. “You’re taste in apparel is enough to turn anyone’s stomach.”

 

“So you _were_ sick again!” John opened the glass front doors for them. “Christ I _knew_ a days rest wasn’t enough.”

 

“I was fine this morning.” Sherlock resisted the urge to blanche at the bright sunlight. The front lawn was spinning in an ugly ferris wheel of green, white, and yellow. He felt his body lurch. The detective swayed to the side, masking his vertigo with a sudden turn to John and a pointed glare.

 

“You were weak as a bloody kitten this morning!” John clasp an impossibly hot hand on the detectives shoulder. “I think you are coming down with the flu.”

 

Sherlock grimaced.

 

It wasn’t the flu.

 

“Seven minutes.” He ground out as they entered the parking deck. “Find the car.”

 

“You don’t remember where it is?” John frowned.

 

“Useless information.” Sherlock waved a bothered hand. “That’s what you’re for.”

 

“Gee, thanks.” John started threading between the parked vehicles.

 

Sherlock bent over and hurled on the pavement in a wash of acid and shame.

 

“Oh for the love of -” John circled back, clasping a warm hand on the detective’s shoulder. “Let’s get you back to the B&B.”

 

Sherlock snarled, righting himself and staggering towards the car in indignation only to have John open the back door and usher him in like a child.

 

“Oh hush,” John tutted. “You are the worst bloody patient ever. What I wouldn’t give to knock you out cold.”

 

“Only when I’m sick?” Sherlock snapped, popping the laptop open in the backseat as John slid behind the wheel. He wished John would leave, leave him alone with the spiraling colors and ringing ears. Let him suffer in peace.

 

“Going to mope now, drama queen?” John shot back, looking over his shoulder as he pulled out of the parking space. “How much time is left?”

 

Sherlock glanced at the laptop clock.

 

“Three minutes. Better book it.”

 

John broke out in a grin. “I’ll drive like a bat out of hell.”

 

“Or Afghanistan.” Sherlock shot back churlishly.

 

“Not many bats there.” John chuckled. “Too bad. Would have wished rabies on half the lot of them.”

 

“You’re bedside manner leaves something to be desired.” Sherlock murmured, turning green as John took a particularly sharp turn. “So does your driving.”

 

“You drove in Baskerville.” John shuddered. “That was scarier than any damn demon hound.”

 

Sherlock closed his eyes.

 

His fever was coming back.

 

~~~~

 

 

Sherlock lay in bed, shivering uncontrollably as he poured over the profile pictures of every AgriSA web tech and accountant.

 

Forty had bloodshot eyes.

 

Eighteen had the tell tale dark circles.

 

Seven were extremely thin.

 

One fit all the above descriptions, lived in a nice part of town without the salary to match and sported an unusually long pinky nail.

 

That was important for some reason. He knew it must be.

 

Sherlock shivered as another wave of nausea hit him. The room was bright and jarring, every noise hammering in like a trumpet. Every meter of him ached and throbbed with sharp jabbing of pins and needles. Someone was sewing his skin, sewing aches and pains into his muscle and bone.

 

Sherlock knew this feeling must be familiar.

 

_Old friends._

 

Black squeezing his head and scratching his eyes in a riot of colors and sounds. Sherlock would sweat it out, sweat the weakness from his pores.

 

He was going through withdrawal.

 

John padded in the room, frowning at the laptop on the bed.

 

“No eye strain for you right now.” John softly tsked and walked over to gingerly retrieve the electronic device. “Last thing we need is you puking on yours and than pilfering mine for the rest of the year.”

 

Sherlock groaned and curled up in a fetal position. Words. They were important. “I would buy another.” He swallowed. “Not everyone is _poor_.”

 

Yes. That was what he meant to say.

 

John ignored him and surveyed the sunlit window. He sighed, something low and raspy that set Sherlock on edge.

 

“Is it too bright in here?”

 

“Yes.” It was. He was whining, elongating the last syllable as he shoved his face under a pillow. John was annoying. The room was annoying. Something important buzzed in his mind like a fat horse fly.

 

He swatted it away.

 

“Joooooohn”

 

“Oh hush.” John rolled his eyes, fishing a blanket from the top shelf of the closet and throwing it over the curtain rod, effectively cloaking the room in semi darkness. John cleared his throat and then sighed again, a dry sound like crushing a corn husk.

 

Sherlock itched with it.

 

“You know,” John sat down on the bedside table and shivered. “I wonder if I am coming down with something as well.”

 

John? Sick?

 

The thought was horrible, gleaming like a black beetle, scurrying across Sherlock’s mind in a clatter of legs and shells. If John was sick he would _know._

 

Sherlock squashed the thought, watch its guts ooze out on the floor. He wouldn’t dwell on it.

 

He hated beetles.

 

“You’re not.” Sherlock said gruffly from underneath his pillow.

 

John fished around in his duffle bag for a paracetamol. Sherlock watched him swallow from beneath the pillow.

 

Besides, John couldn’t be sick.

 

 _Sherlock_ was sick.

 

“We’ve been in York two days.” John frowned. “You’ve been violently ill both days. And I’m starting to feel a bit rough myself.”

 

John gave a short barking cough, the sound of crumpled husks back, rasping against Sherlock’s skull.

 

Unacceptable.

 

“You don’t have what I have.” Sherlock flopped over, presenting his back to John. “You aren’t praying for death.”

 

What if John was really sick? ‘ _Really sick’_ the beetle chirped, scurrying across his mind palace.

 

Sherlock narrowed his eyes.

 

He thought he had squished it.

 

“I just took my temperature in the bathroom.” John rose, crossing the room to lie on the other bed. “I have the beginnings of a fever too.”

 

Sherlock shut his eyes. Black spots chattered as they swam.

 

‘ _Your fault_ ’ the small one said.

 

“Goody” Sherlock hissed, head still buried beneath the pillow.

 

Sherlock opened his eyes. John slumped on the opposite bed, pulling his red and white jumper off like a layer of lasagna.

 

Sherlock used to like pasta? It was a question. He couldn’t remember.

 

“I am going to try to sleep” John switched on the fan beneath the window radiator and settled in. “You should as well patient zero.”

 

Sherlock frowned.

 

The space between their beds seemed impossibly large and angular, cut like corn stalks, flattened into yellow threadbare rugs and dull brown floorboards.

 

Ridiculous.

 

There were no crops allowed in the bedroom.

 

John coughed.

 

Not really such a large space, Sherlock reasoned. Not compared to gulfs and subterranean trenches, the straights of Magellan and tectonic faults. The space between beds and flesh was so close. Practically an embrace.

 

Liar.

 

There were millions of molecules between them, atoms and dust mites, cotton and electrons, and Sherlock was banished to the edge of the world, wretched and cold with the frigid fan rattling and freezing his prickled skin. What if he was banished forever?

 

“John.” His voice was frantic.

 

“Yes?” John sounded reasonable. Sherlock frowned.

 

What had he wanted to say?

 

“ _I’m_ sick.” That was true. He was.

 

John cleared his throat, rasping and gasping in Sherlock’s skull. What had Sherlock meant to say?

 

“I’ve noticed.” John’s voice had an edge to it.

 

Sherlock huffed, looking over at John’s sprawled figure across the room. He squinted and the room swam. John seemed impossibly far and small, and he was shrinking, getting smaller and smaller before his eyes. That shouldn’t be possible. John was _diminishing._ John was now too small to bring Sherlock tea. And his was shrinking still. Sherlock would have to place him in his pocket on cases.

 

Sherlock wasn’t having any of it.

 

Sherlock kicked his covers off with more violence than necessary, wrapping himself in the sheet like a toga he stood and shivered and swayed - a lost Roman in the modern era – and stomped noisily across the room.

 

_He would bridge this void._

 

John sputtered, turning sleepily as Sherlock sank in the tiny twin bed beside him, wrapping long pale arms around him like a lamprey eel.

 

 

“Sherlo-”

 

“My pockets aren’t big enough.” Was that what he meant to say? He frowned and thrust his hand out flush against John’s forehead. Unacceptable. “You _do_ have a fever.”

 

“Yeah, that’s what I said earlier now why are you-”

 

Something was buzzing again. Something important Sherlock couldn’t remember. It was so close to the surface…

 

Something was dangerous.

 

He stared at John and swallowed.

 

Yes. Something _was_ dangerous.

 

That was surely it.

 

Forbidden.

 

Sherlock never liked rules

 

The detective frowned, tossing an arm over John’s back and burying his nose in John’s hair.

 

“Sherlock?” John’s voice was high with panic and something new.

 

Sherlock inhaled, savoring the sent of dandruff and home. He wanted to wrap himself around John, wanted to eat him. Wanted to take his flesh and devour him whole, consume him until every meter of the Doctor was inside Sherlock, creating cells, mitosis and karyokinesis and cytokinesis in him with John, _from_ John.

 

He would bite into John like an apple, red with sin and home. They could be in Eden, he reasoned.

 

_Round and round the garden like a teddy bear._

 

Sherlock shuddered, exhaling against the back of John’s neck in a flush of something sweet, watching as goose bumps trilled up both their arms.

 

“I’m cold.” Sherlock mouthed in John’s hair.

 

That was a lie. Wasn’t it? Sherlock was burning up with fever. Yes. Burning with all that stretched between them, shadowed fruit ripening in an abandoned garden, desolate and left to rot.

 

“Don’t move.” Sherlock pressed his body against John’s back, shivering with fever or something else entirely. “Don’t move.”

 

Sherlock felt John shiver, felt their bodies quiver together, the threads of the universe pulled impossibly tight in the room, the sound of the unspoken impossibly shrill in his ears. Sherlock let his hand run up John’s arm, tracing each freckle in a reverent pattern.

 

“Sherlock?”

 

“Don’t move.” Sherlock murmured. Words were thick. Useless. He felt John’s breath, felt the deep exhale as the doctor’s shaky hand clasp his own, slick with sweat and anticipation.

 

Yes. That was good.

 

John was _his._

 

Sherlock gripped his hand. John should say something, would say something surely.

 

Sherlock nuzzled against the back of John’s neck.

 

He would say something. He always said something.

 

Sherlock pressed his hips against John’s backside and squirmed at the electricity. He clutched them tighter

 

“John.”

 

John was still shrinking. If Sherlock could curl around him, could consume him, he could surely keep him.

 

John exhaled in a hiss.

 

“Don’t.” Sherlock was hissing back, curled tight around him, keeping the shape of John in place, all dandruff and freckles and skin, keeping the mold together because if he let go surely John would spill out.

 

“Don’t.”

 

And the silence stretched thin, fading out against the evening blush of the window and the garden below.

 

He could hear it.

 

The sound of blue wallpaper with English walnut dressers sitting in corners for decades on end, gathering dust in a forgotten corner of York.

 

The sound of breathing, ragged and frightened as they lay there.

 

Silent.

 

The deafening sound of everything he couldn’t say.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ah, sorry for the delay. I am maid of honor for my best friend's last minute wedding with I kid you not 500 guests and holy shit it is WORK. Wedding planning stuff is eating up my life. @__@
> 
> Thank you everyone who stuck around. Fortunately the Wedding is in the beginning of Oct. Then I can go back to being a hermit and writing all the time hahaha!


	18. Black Haired Transgressor

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After Baskerville a string of seemingly unrelated beheadings draw Sherlock and John into a complex case of narcotics and intrigue.
> 
> Actions have consequences, and John’s PTSD comes to a head as the ghosts of both their pasts echo with the demons of the case. For Sherlock, history must be reconciled before the present can be solved.

**Chapter 18**

 

 _She looks like the real thing_  
She tastes like the real thing  
My fake plastic love  
But I can't help the feeling  
I could blow through the ceiling  
If I just turn and run

_-Radiohead ‘Fake Plastic Trees’_

 

 

John awoke feeling like plastic. Like the tacky green of a lawn chair, all stiff and fake, immobile and unnatural. He was a placeholder for better things, all laminate and cotton mouthed.

 

Sherlock was around him.

 

Christ he was tired.

 

Sherlock was wrapped around him like a lover. Like he was part of his flesh, cleaved from his bones.

 

And John had no idea what it meant.

 

What it meant that they did this. Sometimes.

 

He should be used to the feeling of falling. The fact that important things, boundaries and decorum, the press of bodies, hands twined, boundaries that should exist, should mean things, were always blurred. Always erased by Sherlock, burned away in a flash of manic energy and singular logic.

 

“Sherlock.” John attempted to roll over, ignoring the splitting pain in his head.

 

“Ung.” A retaliatory squeeze and a short snort that managed to convey Sherlock’s immense displeasure at being awoken and the expectation that the conversation was over.

 

“Sherlock.” John attempted to shift again, squirming in Sherlock’s vice like grip. He should feel trapped.

 

He didn’t.

 

Instead he felt taunt, that burning stretch before the race, sinews clenched in anticipation of freedom. The press of muscle against corded thigh, the ghost of Sherlock’s breath above the shell of his ear, boney knees scraping the back of his leg. And they were all oddment’s knots of human flesh, disjointed fits with jagged edges and damp cotton, disproportionate and winding taunt and shrill. Because he was back, he was always back. Back in barracks with furtive glances, back in high shool with leather seats, back in front of a laptop screen with Mary crying through a bad connection.

 

 _Liar_ – she had called him.

 

 _Liar_ – she had cried.

 

 _Fake_ – Matthews had said.

 

“ _It wasn’t real.”_ _Matthews had turned away. “It didn’t mean anything.”_

 

But it had, hadn’t it?

 

And there was John rooted to the spot in parade’s rest, with a fist and a fake cough. Always fake, all cellophane and regret. Still tensed for the race, still clearing his throat over a bad connection, and bad relation, a bad creation of myth and man – that simple man, too ordinary to be heroic, too broken to be functional. A middle aged bloke in damp cotton, unshaved and wound beneath his flat mate.

 

 

“Sherlock?”

 

Sherlock was all around him, trapping him, smothering him in something lewd and forbidden.

 

“Sherlock?”

 

John bit back something bitter and hissed. His muscles burned now, and he needed to run. Run and burn with a cleansing fire, wash his sin in the snap of sinew and thrum of blood.

 

“Sherlock get _off!”_

 

And Sherlock reared back as if bitten, hissing through clenched teeth, grinding and grinding into gunpowder and dust.

 

John leaned over the bed and hurled.

 

The stench of stomach acid sent him reeling, Sherlock’s vice grip on his shoulder a burning coal on the bullet wound.

 

“You are sick.” The detective pulled John back into the bed. It wasn’t a question.

 

“Yes.” John shivered.

 

Sherlock’s hands clamped over his head, the heat was unbearable.

 

Something bubbled in his stomached, bubbled and churned until it gurgled its way up and it was _all so funny_.

 

“Bastard.” John wasn’t sure if he was laughing or crying. “You got me sick.”

 

“Yes.” Sherlock faltered. “Yes.” His words sounded strange and unsure.

 

“Bathroom.” John reached out, grasping Sherlock’s bicep, still laughing, still gasping.

 

Sherlock frowned, something dark flitting behind his eyes in narrow flecks of cobalt.

 

“Up.” Sherlock grasp the doctor around the waist, his harsh tone stark against the measured brush of skin against skin.

 

John leaned in, the room reeling in riots of blue and brown, the stench of acid overpowering.

 

Sherlock sidestepped the puddle by the bed, dragging a limp John to the toilette.

 

“John.” He began, the words thick with something too heavy to grasp.

 

“Wanker.” John hurled the contents of his stomach again.

 

“ _John_.” Sherlock’s voice cracked, arching over the last consonants like a pubescent boy. “I _**made**_ you sick.”

 

“Brilliant deduction.” John rested his burning cheek against the cold toilet seat. “I knew you were contagious.”

 

“No,” Sherlock’s voice arched higher, breaking at the vowel only to crumble away. “John.”

 

The last part was a whisper.

 

John slumped to the ground, uncaring. The tiles were cool against his fevered flesh, the bite of the frigid floor a balm that blistered then sweetly ached.

 

“Sherlock.”

 

The detective looked up, his blue eyes hooded, pale like a reptile.

 

“Go clean the bedroom.”

 

~~~~

 

 

“John”

 

Sherlock was crouched over the edge of the bed like an albino panther.

 

It had been hours.

 

Surely days?

 

Only hours.

 

John’s neck lolled back, feeling his cartilage snap like packing bubbles.

 

“You’re burning up.”

 

Sherlock’s hand was on John’s forehead, melting into his flesh and sweat.

 

The paracetamol wasn’t helping.

 

“Yes.”

 

John felt light, a damp paper bag filled with wisps of steam, fragile, skin shallow and impossibly thin.

 

Sherlock’s hands were on him, vibrating as John trembled.

 

He stripped his shirt like a snake shedding skin.

 

The bathroom was sixteen steps. John staggered and Sherlock bore his weight until they reached the threshold.

 

Sherlock hesitated in the doorway, pale eyes hooded.

 

The room swam and heat was a living thing.

 

John lurched forward, shucking his pants with deft fingers, suddenly aware of how chaste the frosted white tile looked. Like baby skin, the soft pale lines of the tub curving down like a woman’s back.

 

He eased into the tub.

 

The facet was two sharp twists of the wrist.

 

Sherlock crouched in the doorway, fingering a loose tile on the floor, eyes never leaving John.

 

The air was full of moisture, and it felt too thick to breathe.

 

John cracked his toes, feeling his joints ache in the cold water.

 

Sherlock hissed.

 

Something thick slithered through the air, coiling around John’s chest and he was suddenly aware of Sherlock’s gaze.

 

Of fourteen white chaste tiles between them, the supple curve of the tub and the slight part of Sherlock’s lips.

 

“Better?”

 

The detective mouthed the words, but the syllables seemed to fall separately, bouncing off the frosted linoleum.

 

John coughed, clearing his throat and letting the words lodge as a shiver.

 

Sherlock nodded, eyes following the tile on the floor.

 

“Tomorrow,” Sherlock ground the tile against the broken plaster until his finger-tips were chalked white, “there is a lead.”

 

John nodded, shifting in the tub.

 

The water moved like a cold caress across his sternum.

 

“Tomorrow.” Sherlock looked up. His eyes were feral, the crows feet squint pinched tight.

 

It was too bright for nurturing. Not in this naked light.

 

Sherlock’s face shuttered shut, he stood suddenly, boney knees cracking.

 

John shifted in the tub, his head clearing, suddenly feeling exposed in the clear water.

 

Sherlock looked aside as John stood, reaching for the towel.

 

Now that he could stand, John felt his nudity obscene.

 

It should mean something, these boundaries.

 

“Tomorrow” John reiterated, wrapping the towel tight.

 

~~~~

 

It should mean something, these boundaries.

 

John was slumped against Sherlock in the cab, his head nestled into Sherlock’s boney shoulder joint. The wool scarf wound around part of his face blocking out the light.

 

It itched.

 

“You don’t have to do much.”

 

John sighed. It was too bright for this. His whole body burned and ached. He felt boneless, like the confines of his clothing were the only thing holding his skin and marrow together.

 

A ragdoll full of pudding, a white lumpy wobbling mass of jello.

 

And they had a case.

 

“I know.”

 

The cab ride was silent.

 

There hadn’t been any sounds in the garden this morning. What had started out as melancholy mists had given way to cold sterile sunlight.

 

“Just stand guard.”

 

John had walked out of the B&B this morning and seen a dead sparrow. All sprawled out on the flagstone, wings spread as if in flight. In was fat, the rounded belly of a mother hen.

 

Three feet away a worm inched across the grass

 

John wondered if the family would starve.

 

“I know.”

 

John coughed.

 

The skies should have been grey. Something to match the feeling in John’s stomach. A backdrop for this sense of foreboding.

 

“You can’t act sick.”

 

Sherlock shifted, and John felt his bones move. All sturdy, ligaments and flesh over taunt wire and gears.

 

“Sherlock, _I know_.”

 

His head was splitting and Sherlock was going to henpeck him to death.

 

John attempted to shift his head from underneath the scarf. Christ it was bright.

 

They were passing several abandoned lots. All the color of rust and dried blood, the ancient bits of brick crumbling in nests of weeds like a women’s hair.

 

John saw a crow in the yellowed grass.

 

“Where are we going?”

 

Sherlock closed his eyes and tilted his head back.

 

His sigh sounded like a rattling gasp.

 

“I have a lead.”

 

“ _I’m Sherlock and I have a lead._ ” John dropped his voice in mimicry and groaned. “Just answer the question.”

 

“It’s an important contact John. One I never thought would have to use again…”

 

John groaned again and shifted back into the scarf.

 

If only he was back in bed. Borrowed under warm downy comforters with sunlight filtering through the lace curtains. Sherlock would be wrapped around him of course, the utter prat had no sense of space.

 

He would come in, wrapped in a sheet all bones and elbows. A mop of dark curls and a twisted frown. He would wrap around John like willow roots, all twisted and gnarled, and John would lay still in his mind’s muddied waters.

 

It should mean something these boundaries.

 

“There is a warehouse…”

 

It should mean something.

 

That they rode like this, John curled into him away from the sunlight. Nestled into his boney shoulder like a child. That Sherlock’s arm was wound in his, the heavy press of his great coat over heating John’s left side.

 

“It’s _always_ a warehouse.”

 

“Well its not Disneyland.” Sherlock huffed in indignation. “These sort of deals always go down in warehouses, factories, shady homes and the lot. Shipping and transportation of goods, it enables the movement of criminals and masks unsavory goods.”

 

Maybe it did mean something.

 

Something incomprehensible. Too fragile to be voiced, that they did _this,_ too fragile lest it slip away.

 

John felt a buried himself further in the itch of wool and the scent of expensive shampoo.

 

_Wait a tic…_

 

“You know about Disneyland?”

 

“Not. The. Point.” John could practically hear Sherlock’s eyes rolling. “You are to act as my bodyguard John. You will wait outside the door. Act military. Don’t talk.”

 

The detective listed his orders like a diagnosis, cold and clinical.

 

John felt a slight squeeze on his right knee. Sherlock expected an answer.

 

“I’ll be trying my best not to puke.” John sighed. “No worries about chatting up random blokes.”

 

Sherlock leaned forward, dislodging John in an abrupt twist.

 

“Two rights past the intersection. Go straight. It will be at the junction of Duluth and Oakridge.”

 

The cabby said something non-committal.

 

John squinted.

 

They were here.

 

Wherever here was.

 

Sherlock stepped out first, turning his coat collar up in a typical display of drama. They looking to be in a trucking weigh in station, a squat brick warehouse sat next to lines of shipping trucks behind chain length fence.

 

The lawn was overgrown and the remnants of an out of use diesel pump seemed like something out of an old cheesy western.

 

Fat raindrops began plopping from the sky, a stark contrast to the still sunny weather.

 

“The Devil is beating his wife.” John mused, stopping to look up at the sky.

 

“Pardon?” Sherlock paused amongst the weeds and broken glass in front of the three-story building.

 

“It's a saying.” John let out a low chuckle. “Learned it from an American bloke in Afghanistan. Raining while the sun is shining and all that.”

 

Sherlock frowned. “I don’t like it.”

 

“Too morbid?” John felt his grin falter. “It seemed to fit over there. The sun never stopped, even when it was raining. No clouds, nothing. Like a serene hell.”

 

Sherlock paused.

 

“John,”

 

Something moved behind the detective’s eyes and John repressed a shudder.

 

“This man is very dangerous. When I am in there, making this deal for information, you _have_ to stay outside. Understood?”

 

The rain picked up, coming down in sudden sheets.

 

“Understood.”

 

~~~

 

The women arrived 10 minutes after Sherlock had gone into the room.

 

John stood outside the door at Parade’s Rest, feeling his knees ache at the immobility. They were in a dilapidated waiting room painted olive green with two florescent lights overhead. John was flanked by another security guard on his right. Whoever Sherlock was meeting had invested in thick doors, because all John could hear was the congested breathing of the tall burly man next to him.

 

She looked to be in her early thirties but had seen better years. Thick eyeliner caked her sunken eyes, and her blonde hair was matted and disheveled. She wore a tube top that was too cold for the weather and low ride skinny jeans that highlighted her gaunt hip bones. She walked like a nervous ferret, eyes darting over the room to land on the man next to him.

 

Her mouth had barely opened before the stranger cut her off.

 

“You can’t see him.” It was the first time John had heard his silent companion speak. His voice was low and gravelly with the tone of a drill instructor. “Get out.”

 

“I have to see him,” The blonde swayed up and John realized with shock she couldn’t have been any old than 25. She scratched her arm nervously and leaned in. “Please.”

 

“Don’t touch me.” The man spat out. “I’m not interested.”

 

“Please,” The woman writhed forward, “I will make it worth your while.”

 

“It was a one time thing and the boss aint interested.” The man curled his lip in contempt. “Go see your local dealer, whore.”

 

“He will want to see me again, I know he will.” She reached out to press her hands against the man’s chest. “Just let me in, he has to see me.”

 

“I said no fucking cunt.” The giant reared back and backhanded her across halfway across the room. “Go blow some other bloke for your fix.”

 

“Hey now!” John was on the man before he had time to think. With a sharp blow to the jugular and a crack to back of the skull the John knocked him unconscious.

 

“Oh thank you!” The blond advanced towards him now, voice wheedling. “I just need to see him. You understand, don’t you?”

 

John stood over the passed out man and cleared his throat.

 

That wasn’t what he had meant to do.

 

_Shit._

 

“I, err, now look here.” John thrust his hands out in an attempted to disentangle himself from the blonde attempting to plaster herself on him, arms tangling around his back.

 

Except she wasn’t after John.

 

John heard a click and felt the cold draft open behind him and suddenly the blonde was slithering around him and sprinting through the open doorway.

 

_Shit._

 

They were in a brown factory room. The ceiling arched two stories high and sunlight flit through massive industrial fans in the walls. Bookshelves lined one wall next to metal piping.

 

Sherlock sat in front of a desk in the middle of the room, conversing with a slender man with pinched nose and weasel face.

 

They stood up at John and the blonde’s entrance.

 

“John.” Sherlock snapped in irritation.

 

“What is the meaning of this?!” The boss who John had now mentally dubbed Weasel Man stood up and pressed the intercom on his desk. “Lucas!”

 

The blonde threw herself behind the desk at the Weasel Man, pleading hysterically. The Weasel Man kept jabbing the intercom insistently until another burley man appeared in the doorway.

 

“Lucas is out cold, boss.” The new man entered, frowning.

 

“Sorry, I err,” John scratched the back of his head, “He hit her.” He made a motion towards the blonde crying hysterically at Weasel Man’s feet.

 

“What?” Weasel Man hissed, clearly not amused at John’s gallantry. The burley man strode over and hauled the blonde roughly to her fit, dragging her out of the room.

 

John tensed again. _No one was…._

 

“I apologize for my man.” Sherlock cut in, “Ex-military and all that. Excellent bodyguard, hopeless romantic.”

 

Weasel Man slammed his fist down on the desk, his face purpling with something barely contained. John immediately straightened, sensing the tension in the room. The man behind him returned and shifted uneasily. John felt the familiar calm wash over him - danger.

 

“I don’t care whose fucking military. You piss in here after disappearing for years” Weasel Man was low and lethal, “Claiming you have some new drug and expect me to pay top dollar for some untested street shit.”

 

John tensed.

 

“It’s not _untested_.” Sherlock leaned forward, his eyes narrowing. “Does my reputation mean nothing?”

 

The room suddenly _swam._

 

“You’re reputation means shit. You disappeared years ago. You mean nothing more to me than a junkie on the street.”

 

John bite back bile.

 

“Funny, you saw me with little introduction as soon as I dropped my name,” Sherlock leaned forward, “and the slant of your shoulders towards me suggests you are just as eager to get your hands on a modified schedule II barbiturate as I thought. I can always go to Erin with this.”

 

 _A_ _modified schedule II_ _barbiturate_?

 

“Erin’s is a piece of lying shit. If you want to distribute you will go through me.” The Weasel Man settled down again. “What do you want?”

 

“I want information about John Flatly.” Sherlock reached into his pocket and spread several pill bottles across the table. “In exchange for my first batch.”

 

“Flatly is none of your business.” Weasel Man’s mouth snapped shut.

 

“Not for a new product?”

 

“No.” Weasel man frowned. “Where did you get that name?”

 

Sherlock spread his hands and smiled. “I recently became a chemist at AGRIeen.”

 

“Then you should know Flatly is valuable.” Weasel Man snorted. “More valuable than your street pills. No one wants the slow stuff anyways. It's all about the speed now. Get out.”

 

“You’ve changed Robert.” Sherlock frowned, snatching the bottles faster than the eye could follow. “This was a fine business deal.”

 

“It was a devils bargain and none of your business.” The Weasel Man slammed his hand down on the remaining bottle. “Leave it. If it is any good I will offer you a 20% cut. No information.”

 

“I’m not interested in a cut.” Sherlock snorted.

 

“You were interested in a lot more than a cut back in the day.” Weasel Man nodded to the door. “Out.”

 

Sherlock stood with a whirl of his coat and exited the room.

 

John followed numbly.

 

 _A_ _modified_ _schedule II_ _barbiturate_?

 

 

~~~~

 

When John was a medical student in uni he shared a dorm with a quiet exchange student from South Korea named Seung Lee.

 

Seung had a rice cooker, an ugly relic of the 80’s, a ghastly pea green color with a fraying electrical cord. It had indecipherable instructions in Korean and a fat dancing cartoon frog surrounded by hearts on the outside of the pot.

 

John couldn’t make rice in it to save his life.

 

It was a rice cooker, it was supposed to make everything _easier._ But John would either add too much water or too much rice and would always come home to a squat green pot burst open with the pressure of too much glutinous mush.

 

Combined with his quiet, unfailingly polite roommate, the whole thing seemed a perfect metaphor for all things foreign and indecipherable – the absence of what was quintessentially _not_ British and beyond his capacity to be bothered.

 

Riding in the cramped train car back to London John felt a sudden disgust for what had certainly been equal parts cultural misunderstanding and John just being a lazy cook.

 

They had gone back to the B&B after meeting with Weasel Man. Sherlock in a black mood had packed immediately and declared they were leaving for London at once. The train had been an old one, the ceilings slanted in harsh angles, rushing down towards John’s head at broken incline.

 

John felt bloated with unspoken questions. The phrase _schedule II_ _barbiturate_ bubbling in his mind like overcooked rice – sticky and expanding with guilt and rage.

 

He was a damnable pressure cooker – sitting on the slick brown laminate seats boiling over with unspoken accusations and spite. Waiting in stoic agony for Sherlock to broach the subject – to lance the blister.

 

He was a soldier.

 

These things were beyond him. A foreign culture of words and gushing sentiment that seemed garish under stifling English sensibilities.

 

John clenched his fist.

 

Men _didn’t talk._

 

The country side slid outside the window in rolling green waves, intersected by sharp lines of jagged stack stone walls and scrawny trees. A testament to a heritage of farmers and bleating sheep, of furrowed brows and understated gestures.

 

A Sherlock sat there, stewing in what he clearly viewed as abject failure on the case front. Not caring, not registering the _fucking prat._

 

Nausea threatened to consume John, black and bitter in oily waves, slick and silent.

 

Sherlock’s voice was a visible blur now, rows of syllables bearing down on him like a bullet, like fragments of colored sound, the shrapnel of lies lodged in his throat and shoulder.

 

He could _strangle_ the man.

 

Because one word writhed in his mind like a living thing, poisoning his thoughts like some black-eyed apparition of betrayal.

 

_Liar._

 

And Judas sat there, a black haired transgressor unaware of his sins.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AGH this chapter made me tear my hair out. Never fear, this story isn't over or abandoned it's just the above chapter drove me bonkers. Thank you for everyone who has continued to stick with this despite my bouts of writers block and crazy schedule. I WILL finish this thing, but I second guess everything I write so it makes the going slow and my schedule continues to be erratic. I see why George R. R. Martin drives everyone crazy....
> 
> If you are enjoying everything please please PLEASE comment. I cannot tell you how much your words inspire me. I have seriously been agonizing over editing this last chapter for weeks - nit picking at the last scene until I was purple - when someone commented yesterday that they hoped there was more of this story coming and THAT was gave me the determination to just finish it and post it the scene worries be damned. So yes, I read every word, and they help inspire me to write. You guys are the best. <3


	19. Daniel and The Lion's Den

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John stood on the threshold of something palpable and raw. Sherlock laid there, fingers poised in thought as if he would rip the answers from the very threads of the universe. 
> 
> He looked up, grey eyes scanning as John felt every stark detail stripped from him with each breath. The intimacy of the invasion burned and John felt the question hang between them. The secret cleaved from his flesh and silence.
> 
> \-------------
> 
> After Baskerville a string of seemingly unrelated beheadings draw Sherlock and John into a complex case of narcotics and intrigue.
> 
> Actions have consequences, and John’s PTSD comes to a head as the ghosts of both their pasts echo with the demons of the case. For Sherlock, history must be reconciled before the present can be solved.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The stars, the moon, they have all been blown out  
> You left me in the dark  
> No dawn, no day, I'm always in this twilight  
> In the shadow of your heart
> 
> \- Florence and the Machine ‘Cosmic Love’
> 
>  
> 
> ~~~~~~~
> 
>  
> 
> Just a head's up the tags have changed to explicit for the content of future chapters. Yep, I finally got up the nerve to try my hand at smut. So spoiler alert: They are going to be boning sooner rather than later.

**Chapter 19**

_~~~~~_

 

 

Sherlock was furious.

 

Not the mere annoyance one gets at motor traffic or rude passengers on the tube. His fury was beyond an eye roll, beyond irritation at chip and pin machines, empty fridges, worthless siblings and whatever else peeved the world.

 

Sherlock’s interests _mattered._

 

He only cared about what was critical, essential, vital. But sometimes everything coalesced against him in worthlessness. To say the world was loathsome was a platitude against the overwhelming truth that everything was singularly and irreparably rotten.

 

Disgusting.

 

He entered Baker’s street with a slam, ignoring the chirp of Mrs Hudson’s greeting. John narrowed his eyes behind him and went to hug the woman, his silhouette partially hidden by the banister.

 

“Oh my boys are back! Do you think you could help me with this, my hip is killing me and I just can’t-”

 

“Yes. Nice. Indeed.” Sherlock flapped a hand in the woman’s general direction and kept going.

 

Roberts had been a dead end.

 

Figures.

 

“Sherlock!” John was barking something and Sherlock was half way up the stairs, skipping them three at the time.

 

“Not _now.”_

 

This case was like a festering open wound at this point and he _just had to pick at the bleeding scab._

 

At this rate the nasty thing would scar. Leave an ugly little mark mocking the fact it was never solved, never completely healed.

 

He could hear John fiddling with the door to the flat (had he slammed it?) and Sherlock flopped down on the couch with a huff.

 

Everything was loathsome. The furniture was speckled with age and stains, the springs of the couch bit at his rear and dust moats floated around his head in a riot of disorder. Everything was slanted and _wrong_ and if Sherlock could only burn it all to ash and start over he could be free of this tedium, this worthless pathetic substitute for life.

 

“ _Sherlock!”_ And John was standing in the yellow light, roaring like a rapid, dust motes framing his yellow hair like a halo, like Daniel in the Lion’s Den.

 

 _The Lion’s Den_ …

 

And Sherlock smiled, smiled and leaned forward because John was clearly furious about something and the cackle of his energy, the burn of his rage, was better than any balm.

 

_Magnificent._

 

“What?” Sherlock cocked an eyebrow, counting the dust motes that floated around John’s head.

 

“You just…you can’t…” John’s lips pursed together in displeasure and Sherlock licked his lips.

 

John’s rage was so vibrant.

 

_Beautiful._

 

John sighed and suddenly his face wilted. His anger seemed to fold on itself. His lips were moving but Sherlock couldn’t hear a word.

 

The moment was over.

 

“You don’t have to be an total arse, you could have at least said hello.”

 

“Mmmm.”

 

Uninterested. Dull. Worthless.

 

“She needed help with the trash. It took three minutes to carry it to the bins Sherlock. Three. Minutes.”

 

Sherlock tuned back in and now was painfully aware of the claustrophobic little room, the tedium of it all. John’s voice was soft yet strange. The yellow light was fading and he was trapped and listless yet again.

 

“Oh, that.” Sherlock waved a dismissive hand and sighed. He needed an experiment or something.

 

Anything but _this._

 

“Yes, _that._ She’s an old woman with a bad hip, a dead criminal husband and no real family to speak of. Just-just think before you open that mouth.”

 

Boring.

 

Sherlock slumped further into the couch.

 

“Dull.”

 

“No we- don’t just _don’t_ okay Sherlock. I am **not** in the mood.”

 

The word snapped like a whip and Sherlock peaked up from the couch, marginally interested now that the prospect of John’s anger was back.

 

Only one thing to do.

 

Goad him.

 

“Mood? What, offended that I’m not hysterical over not saying ‘ello’ and helping an old woman with the trash?”

 

That seemed to do it. Something clicked behind John’s eyes and his face flushed scarlet.

 

“Christ do you even hear yourself? I’m not asking you to actually _care_ Sherlock, God knows that would be too much for your precious whatever. Just _act_ like you have some decency.”

 

“Oh.” This speech again. Never mind, Sherlock wasn’t interested in a monologue about ethics and empathy. “Why bother?”

 

“Why bo-?” John hissed, obviously riled up “Why have some fucking _humanity?_ I don’t know Sherlock, maybe because you aren’t the center of the fucking universe - we aren’t all playthings for you. Why have a little _compassion_ when you can treat everyone around you like utter shit? _”_

 

The sudden force of John’s furry lit up the room. John was a nexus of color now, the fading sun bathing him in hues of amber and gold.

 

Sherlock could _taste_ his anger.

 

He didn’t care its source.

 

He grinned

 

“Oh yes, John. Let discuss humanity shall we?” Sherlock licked his lips, savoring the warmth of John’s rage. “Lets discuss the population of this rotten infinitesimal little planet scurrying and hurrying about in their dying throes. You want humanity? A homo sapien benevolence, a radiant empathy for the disgusting plight for all of the living like some dirty misguided monk in a Tibetan monastery? There is only anarchy John, anarchy in a void where man builds little fences and niceties to hide the truth that we are all _predators_ John, only some of us are more adapt to hunting than others.”

 

That should do it.

 

Sherlock waited for the oncoming rage, the spark of something living and _vital._ The borrowed sensation that _something_ was important.

 

There was only John, small and quivering in the fading light.

 

“Predators?” John hissed. “Oh yes just reduce us down to animals. Down to experiments Sherlock.” John, faltered over the word _experiment,_ his fist clenching and unclenching. “Lessor things to be manipulated for your amusement and convenience.”

 

The yellow light faded and the white noise closed back in.

 

Sherlock frowned.

 

Not even John’s rage could combat the oncoming ‘roar’ it seemed.

 

“Trust me” Sherlock sighed the sigh of the long suffering. “If all of you were manipulated for my convenience I would be in a much better mood.”

 

“You just-“ John stood there, aghast at some trite notion of normal sensibilities. “You just don’t fucking get it do you? You can’t just _use_ people!”

 

Ethics again.

 

Boring.

 

“No.”

 

Sherlock sighed and rolled over to stare at the ceiling. John suddenly appeared, red faced and hovering above him.

 

“ **No**!”

 

John bellowed and the air seemed to vibrate with the force of his rage.

 

His rage.

 

Sherlock pulled a face and pulled himself up on his elbows.

 

John’s pupils were dilated, his chest heaving for air. His fist clenching and unclenching as if he were holding himself back from punching Sherlock.

 

Over Mrs. Hudson and a little goading?

 

Something was off.

 

“John.” Sherlock frowned and sat up the rest of the way on the couch. “This isn’t about Mrs. Hudson.”

 

John moved forward, nostrils flaring and tension radiating off him in waves. He coughed and glanced down, as if deciding whether to pummel the detective or simply leave.

 

Sherlock felt his interest pique.

 

Only marginally though.

 

Still…

 

John looked up suddenly, his shoulders snapping back and his eyes slanting into narrow slits.

 

“I _**know**_ Sherlock.” John leaned in, so close now, their faces practically touching. “I fucking know what you did.”

 

Sherlock mentally ticked off the list of things John could possibly know.

 

Too vague.

 

Despite the limit of John’s (small) intellect the information was too little and the list too long.

 

“Hmmmm?” Sherlock closed his eyes and started reviewing the list from the beginning.

 

John’s reply came out in a smooth reptilian hiss, a low baritone so deep it almost seemed to echo in the tiny room.

 

“You fucking **lied** to me.”

 

Sherlock repressed the urge to shiver, wondering if John had ever used this voice in the army.

 

Sherlock had lied to John?

 

The list was still too long.

 

“When?”

 

That was it. John had been a taunt rubber band before, pulled back from an unsteady thumb. And he was flying across the coffee table, hands fisting in the material of Sherlock’s shirt, hauling him to his feet.

 

“ABOUT THE SECOBARBITAL!”

 

Sherlock froze.

 

How much did John know?

 

“I trusted you in this matter. I fucking trusted you not to treat this like an addict Sherlock. And what did you do? You fucking lied to me and stole from me!”

 

“Oh.” Sherlock sighed in relief. “That.”

 

John only knew about the fish tank.

 

“Yes. _That.”_ John spat out.

 

Sherlock frowned. He had a good reason. Many good reasons in fact: the case, the fact he could, boredom….

 

John was just being unreasonable.

 

“Honestly Joh-”

 

“ _ **How many did you take?”**_

 

John’s roar echoed around the room, his face contorting into something brutal and unknown.

 

Sherlock felt his stomach clench with sudden unease.

 

He didn’t recognize… _this._

 

Sherlock took the drugs for good reason. Lied for good reason. Because he was bored and the case called for it. And if John couldn’t handle the thought of Sherlock testing them on himself, well of course he couldn’t know the rest.

 

Besides, John must know, surely John did _know_ that Sherlock would never, could never truly endanger….

 

That to Sherlock John Watson represented more a guiding light, more than oxygen, simply _more._

 

How dare John act like Sherlock wasn’t always thinking of him, wasn’t doing things for the greater good.

 

Sherlock bristled with sudden indignation.

 

“How quant. Treating me like a junkie now?”

 

John snarled and shook him.

 

“Only when you _act the part_.”

 

“I took approximately the same amount _you did_ doctor!” Sherlock spat out.

 

“I know that’s not true.” John’s face flushed. “You were going to try to get information be selling a _schedule II_ _barbiturate_ and you’ve been sick for-”

 

Something clicked behind John’s eyes.

 

Sherlock felt his stomach drop.

 

Too much information…

 

“John…”

 

Sherlock whispered his name like he would to a skittish animal.

 

John wouldn’t understand.

 

“Sherlock,” John’s voice dropped impossibly low, “why was I sick?”

 

He couldn’t know.

 

“John, it wasn’t-”

 

“Why _**the fuck**_ **was I sick?”**

 

The room seemed to contract and John loomed impossibly large.

 

“John you have to understa-”

 

Sherlock fought to stay calm. To sound reasonable.

 

“Just. Answer. The. Bloody. Question.”

 

John stood there, framed in a halo of yellow light, face glowing like some avenging angel, ready to strike Sherlock down.

 

_Like Daniel in the Lion’s Den._

 

No.

 

Sherlock hadn’t done anything wrong. John’s dreams, he had _needed_ it.

 

Right?

 

“Sherlock.” John’s voice sounded impossibly calm, like he would understand, like it would be alright. “Did you give me any of the modified drug?”

 

His voice was so low Sherlock could barely hear it.

 

Should he lie?

 

Sherlock frowned. Dreams of Moriarty. Were those John’s or Sherlock’s? It didn’t matter. There had been something black, something horrible, these memories of childhood and John’s of the war. They had held each other, had needed each other in the darkness.

 

John was his light, and he had been suffering.

 

Should he lie?

 

“Yes.” Sherlock felt numb, but this was right? He was being honest now, it should be alright? He nodded. “Yes I gave you some.”

 

John exhaled and closed his eyes.

 

“ _How?_ ”

 

Sherlock cocked his head. How? Oh this part was clever, really! John would appreciate this!

 

“The humidifier.” Sherlock couldn’t help but grin.

 

John nodded.

 

Sherlock felt his chest expand with relief.

 

“I see.” John murmured, releasing Sherlock’s shoulders and starting to turn.

 

“Wait,” Sherlock frowned and reached out, “Don’t you want to know how I thought of it? It’s quite clever, really.”

 

John reared back as if struck.

 

“Don’t _**touch me**_.”

 

And that burned. That simple statement branded like a hot iron.

 

John couldn’t mean it. John had to be there. Had to comprehend, had to be his light and heart and understanding. And all the sudden John’s rage was no longer clinically beautiful, no longer a thing of amusement and interest and Sherlock felt his stomach twist.

 

John wouldn’t…

 

And he could feel John shift, start to pull back and leave and the void was rushing in a furry of loneliness and black.

 

“No.”

 

He reached for him.

 

“Don’t’ Sherlock”

 

“ **No.”** And Sherlock gripped him by the shoulders, trying to force understanding in with the press of his fingers. “You don’t understand.”

 

“I understand _**all too well**_ **.** You treat me like a fucking lab rat Sherlock. This, Baskerville-”

 

“You are my _partner._ ”

 

“No, I am your bloody hound dog. And you keep expecting me to come back over and over-”

 

“No you are my _**partner**_ _!_ ”

 

“I don’t think you even know what that word means! Christ Sherlock you don’t _do this to your friends._ ”

 

“You aren’t my _friend_ you…”

 

And that was it. The precipice and John was trying to pull away, to leave and go and Sherlock would shatter. Would break into a thousand fragments, like glass returning back to sand. There would be nothing left in the desolation, the wreckage John would leave behind if he stepped out that door.

 

And that was it.

 

John wasn’t his friend, he was….

 

That was it, wasn’t it?

 

“John, I,” Sherlock swallowed, suddenly lost in this sea of sentiment. And the blackness was closing in. His heart would stop, would seize and rot and he would rather die and let the lions eat him and the wet black earth take him then be here without John, alone.

 

He had told the truth. Wasn’t that enough? How could John not _know_?

 

“John, you must understand…” He trailed off. The words wouldn’t come.

 

_Don't ever leave me._

 

_I would kill for you._

 

_Die for you._

 

_Consume you inch by inch and ache for more._

 

And he stood there, lost and mute. Worthless as John looked at him, was repulsed by him. And he was breaking, fragmenting, splintering apart piece by piece, cell by cell, electron and neutron.

 

And John was leaving, had turned away and split the atom, and Sherlock was left in the aftershock, the wave of blackness and radiation, the emptiness that would poison him from the inside out. Strip his heart in a chemical peel and leave only the ache of his bones and loneliness in the sudden dark.

 

A fragment of a man, lost in the fading daylight, lost in the shadow of his heart.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh those two. I promise Sherlock will stop being a dumbass and confess his feelings eventually lol.
> 
> Thank you again for everyone who has continued to stick with this despite my bouts of writers block and crazy schedule. Everyone who comments truly inspires me and gives me the confidence to write more.
> 
> Just a heads up if you haven't noticed I sometimes don't respond to comments immediately. This is because I have stupid high anxiety and I am not sure what to say when people are kind and supportive and I feel like everything I write back sounds so....trite I guess. At least compared to how much joy your comments give me. I am trying to get better about this even if I comment a month later when I finally get my nerve up. Anyways, please know I reread the comments over and over and over ad nauseam, especially when I have writers block, because they inspire me so much. So yeah, please keep being your normal wonderful selves and I will try and not be such an anxious basket case.
> 
> As always you can also always contact me on my tumblr http://lovelylaceandlilac.tumblr.com/


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